Don’t bother to answer now, (for you’ve writing enough to do without allowing me to add to the burden,) but tell me when you see me again!
Which we do hope will be next Saturday or Sunday or Monday. Couldn’t you come now and mull over the alterations which you are going to make in your Ms, and make them after you go back? Wouldn’t it assist the work if you dropped out of harness and routine for a day or two and have that sort of revivification which comes of a holiday-forgetfulness of the work-shop? I can always work after I’ve been to your house; and if you will come to mine, now, and hear the club toot their various horns over the exasperating metaphysical question which I mean to lay before them in the disguise of a literary extravaganza, it would just brace you up like a cordial.
(I feel sort of mean trying to persuade a man to put
down a critical piece of work at a critical time,
but yet I am honest in thinking it would not hurt
the work nor impair your interest in it to come under
the circumstances.) Mrs. Clemens says, “Maybe
the Howellses could come Monday if they cannot come
Saturday; ask them; it is worth trying.”
Well, how’s that? Could you? It
would be splendid if you could. Drop me a postal
card—I should have a twinge of conscience
if I forced you to write a letter, (I am honest about
that,)—and if you find you can’t make
out to come, tell me that you bodies will come the
next Saturday if the thing is possible, and stay over
Sunday.
Yrs
ever
Mark.
Howells, however, did
not come to the club meeting, but promised to
come soon when they
could have a quiet time to themselves together.
As to Huck’s language,
he declared:
“I’d have that swearing out in an instant. I suppose I didn’t notice it because the locution was so familiar to my Western sense, and so exactly the thing that Huck would say.” Clemens changed the phrase to, “They comb me all to thunder,” and so it stands to-day.
The “Carnival of Crime,” having served its purpose at the club, found quick acceptance by Howells for the Atlantic. He was so pleased with it, in fact, that somewhat later he wrote, urging that its author allow it to be printed in a dainty book, by Osgood, who made a specialty of fine publishing. Meantime Howells had written his Atlantic notice of Tom Sawyer, and now inclosed Clemens a proof of it. We may judge from the reply that it was satisfactory.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston: