Apl. 22, 1876.  My dear Howells, You’ll see per enclosed slip that I appear for the first time on the stage next Wednesday.  You and Mrs. H. come down and you shall skip in free.

I wrote my skeleton novelette yesterday and today.  It will make a little under 12 pages.

Please tell Aldrich I’ve got a photographer engaged, and tri-weekly issue
is about to begin.  Show him the canvassing specimens and beseech him to
subscribe. 
                    Ever yours,
                              S. L. C.

In his next letter Mark Twain explains why Tom Sawyer is not to appear as soon as planned.  The reference to “The Literary Nightmare” refers to the “Punch, Conductor, Punch with Care” sketch, which had recently appeared in the Atlantic.  Many other versifiers had had their turn at horse-car poetry, and now a publisher was anxious to collect it in a book, provided he could use the Atlantic sketch.  Clemens does not tell us here the nature of Carlton’s insult, forgiveness of which he was not yet qualified to grant, but there are at least two stories about it, or two halves of the same incident, as related afterward by Clemens and Canton.  Clemens said that when he took the Jumping Frog book to Carlton, in 1867, the latter, pointing to his stock, said, rather scornfully:  “Books?  I don’t want your book; my shelves are full of books now,” though the reader may remember that it was Carlton himself who had given the frog story to the Saturday Press and had seen it become famous.  Carlton’s half of the story was that he did not accept Mark Twain’s book because the author looked so disreputable.  Long afterward, when the two men met in Europe, the publisher said to the now rich and famous author:  “Mr. Clemens, my one claim on immortality is that I declined your first book.”

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Hartford, Apl. 25, 1876
My dear Howells,—­Thanks for giving me the place of honor.

Bliss made a failure in the matter of getting Tom Sawyer ready on time —­the engravers assisting, as usual.  I went down to see how much of a delay there was going to be, and found that the man had not even put a canvasser on, or issued an advertisement yet—­in fact, that the electrotypes would not all be done for a month!  But of course the main fact was that no canvassing had been done—­because a subscription harvest is before publication, (not after, when people have discovered how bad one’s book is.)

Well, yesterday I put in the Courant an editorial paragraph stating that Tam Sawyer is “ready to issue, but publication is put off in order to secure English copyright by simultaneous publication there and here.  The English edition is unavoidably delayed.”

You see, part of that is true.  Very well.  When I observed that my “Sketches” had dropped from a sale of 6 or 7000 a month down to 1200 a month, I said “this ain’t no time to be publishing books; therefore, let Tom lie still till Autumn, Mr. Bliss, and make a holiday book of him to beguile the young people withal.”