I read the entire Atlantic this time.  Wonderful number.  Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke’s story was a ten-strike.  I wish she would write 12 old-time New England tales a year.

Good times to you all!  Mind if you don’t run here for a few days you will go to hence without having had a fore-glimpse of heaven.

Mark.

The play, “Ah Sin,” that had done little enough in Washington, was that summer given another trial by Augustin Daly, at the Fifth Avenue Theater, New York, with a fine company.  Clemens had undertaken to doctor the play, and it would seem to have had an enthusiastic reception on the opening night.  But it was a summer audience, unspoiled by many attractions.  “Ah Sin” was never a success in the New York season—­never a money-maker on the road.

     The reference in the first paragraph of the letter that follows is
     to the Bermuda chapters which Mark Twain was publishing
     simultaneously in England and America.

Elmira, Aug 3,1877.  My dear Howells,—­I have mailed one set of the slips to London, and told Bentley you would print Sept. 15, in October Atlantic, and he must not print earlier in Temple Bar.  Have I got the dates and things right?

I am powerful glad to see that No. 1 reads a nation sight better in print than it did in Ms. I told Bentley we’d send him the slips, each time, 6 weeks before day of publication.  We can do that can’t we?  Two months ahead would be still better I suppose, but I don’t know.

“Ah Sin” went a-booming at the Fifth Avenue.  The reception of Col.  Sellers was calm compared to it.

The criticisms were just; the criticisms of the great New York dailies are always just, intelligent, and square and honest—­notwithstanding, by a blunder which nobody was seriously to blame for, I was made to say exactly the opposite of this in a newspaper some time ago.  Never said it at all, and moreover I never thought it.  I could not publicly correct it before the play appeared in New York, because that would look as if I had really said that thing and then was moved by fears for my pocket and my reputation to take it back.  But I can correct it now, and shall do it; for now my motives cannot be impugned.  When I began this letter, it had not occurred to me to use you in this connection, but it occurs to me now.  Your opinion and mine, uttered a year ago, and repeated more than once since, that the candor and ability of the New York critics were beyond question, is a matter which makes it proper enough that I should speak through you at this time.  Therefore if you will print this paragraph somewhere, it may remove the impression that I say unjust things which I do not think, merely for the pleasure of talking.

There, now, Can’t you say—­

“In a letter to Mr. Howells of the Atlantic Monthly, Mark Twain describes the reception of the new comedy ‘Ali Sin,’ and then goes on to say:”  etc.