Meantime, Mark Twain himself, having got ‘A Tramp Abroad’ on the presses, was at work with enthusiasm on a story begun nearly three years before at Quarry Farm-a story for children-its name, as he called it then, “The Little Prince and The Little Pauper.”  He was presently writing to Howells his delight in the new work.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Hartford, Mch. 11, ’80. 
My dear Howells,--.....I take so much pleasure in my story that I am loth
to hurry, not wanting to get it done.   Did I ever tell you the plot of
it?   It begins at 9 a.m., Jan. 27, 1547, seventeen and a half hours
before Henry VIII’s death, by the swapping of clothes and place, between
the prince of Wales and a pauper boy of the same age and countenance (and
half as much learning and still more genius and imagination) and after
that, the rightful small King has a rough time among tramps and ruffians
in the country parts of Kent, whilst the small bogus King has a gilded
and worshipped and dreary and restrained and cussed time of it on the
throne—­and this all goes on for three weeks—­till the midst of the
coronation grandeurs in Westminster Abbey, Feb. 20, when the ragged true
King forces his way in but cannot prove his genuineness—­until the bogus
King, by a remembered incident of the first day is able to prove it for
him—­whereupon clothes are changed and the coronation proceeds under the
new and rightful conditions.

My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of the laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the King himself and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them applied to others—­all of which is to account for certain mildnesses which distinguished Edward VI’s reign from those that preceded and followed it.

Imagine this fact—­I have even fascinated Mrs. Clemens with this yarn for youth.  My stuff generally gets considerable damning with faint praise out of her, but this time it is all the other way.  She is become the horseleech’s daughter and my mill doesn’t grind fast enough to suit her.  This is no mean triumph, my dear sir.

Last night, for the first time in ages, we went to the theatre—­to see Yorick’s Love.  The magnificence of it is beyond praise.  The language is so beautiful, the passion so fine, the plot so ingenious, the whole thing so stirring, so charming, so pathetic!  But I will clip from the Courant —­it says it right.

And what a good company it is, and how like live people they all acted! 
The “thee’s” and the “thou’s” had a pleasant sound, since it is the
language of the Prince and the Pauper.  You’ve done the country a service
in that admirable work.... 
                              Yrs Ever,
          
                              Mark.

The play, “Yorick’s Love,” mentioned in this letter, was one which
Howells had done for Lawrence Barrett.