Now the favor I ask of you is that you will have the words “Ah Sin, a Drama,” printed in the middle of a note-paper page and send the same to me, with Bill.  We don’t want anybody to know that we are building this play.  I can’t get this title page printed here without having to lie so much that the thought of it is disagreeable to one reared as I have been.  And yet the title of the play must be printed—­the rest of the application for copyright is allowable in penmanship.

We have got the very best gang of servants in America, now.  When George first came he was one of the most religious of men.  He had but one fault—­young George Washington’s.  But I have trained him; and now it fairly breaks Mrs. Clemens’s heart to hear George stand at that front door and lie to the unwelcome visitor.  But your time is valuable; I must not dwell upon these things.....I’ll ask Warner and Harte if they’ll do Blindfold Novelettes.  Some time I’ll simplify that plot.  All it needs is that the hanging and the marriage shall not be appointed for the same day.  I got over that difficulty, but it required too much Ms to reconcile the thing—­so the movement of the story was clogged.

I came near agreeing to make political speeches with our candidate for
Governor the 16th and 23 inst., but I had to give up the idea, for Harte
and I will be here at work then. 
                              Yrs ever,
                                        Mark

Mark Twain was writing few letters these days to any one but Howells, yet in November he sent one to an old friend of his youth, Burrough, the literary chair-maker who had roomed with him in the days when he had been setting type for the St. Louis Evening News.

To Mr. Burrough, of St. Louis: 

Hartford, Nov. 1, 1876.  My dear Burroughs,—­As you describe me I can picture myself as I was 20 years ago.  The portrait is correct.  You think I have grown some; upon my word there was room for it.  You have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug.... imagining that he is remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right.  Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle-headedness—­and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all.  That is what I was at 19 and 20; and that is what the average Southerner is at 60 today.  Northerners, too, of a certain grade.  It is of children like this that voters are made.  And such is the primal source of our government!  A man hardly knows whether to swear or cry over it.

I think I comprehend the position there—­perfect freedom to vote just as you choose, provided you choose to vote as other people think—­social ostracism, otherwise.  The same thing exists here, among the Irish.  An Irish Republican is a pariah among his people.  Yet that race find fault with the same spirit in Know-Nothingism.