Authors were always sending their books to Mark Twain to read, and no busy man was ever more kindly disposed toward such offerings, more generously considerate of the senders.  Louis Pendleton was a young unknown writer in 1888, but Clemens took time to read his story carefully, and to write to him about it a letter that cost precious time, thought, and effort.  It must have rejoiced the young man’s heart to receive a letter like that, from one whom all young authors held supreme.

To Louis Pendleton, in Georgia: 

Elmira, N. Y., Aug. 4, ’88.  My dear sir,—­I found your letter an hour ago among some others which had lain forgotten a couple of weeks, and I at once stole time enough to read Ariadne.  Stole is the right word, for the summer “Vacation” is the only chance I get for work; so, no minute subtracted from work is borrowed, it is stolen.  But this time I do not repent.  As a rule, people don’t send me books which I can thank them for, and so I say nothing—­which looks uncourteous.  But I thank you.  Ariadne is a beautiful and satisfying story; and true, too—­which is the best part of a story; or indeed of any other thing.  Even liars have to admit that, if they are intelligent liars; I mean in their private [the word conscientious written but erased] intervals. (I struck that word out because a man’s private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always; what he speaks—­but these be platitudes.)

If you want me to pick some flaws—­very well—­but I do it unwillingly.  I notice one thing—­which one may notice also in my books, and in all books whether written by man or God:  trifling carelessness of statement or Expression.  If I think that you meant that she took the lizard from the water which she had drawn from the well, it is evidence—­it is almost proof—­that your words were not as clear as they should have been.  True, it is only a trifling thing; but so is mist on a mirror.  I would have hung the pail on Ariadne’s arm.  You did not deceive me when you said that she carried it under her arm, for I knew she didn’t; still it was not your right to mar my enjoyment of the graceful picture.  If the pail had been a portfolio, I wouldn’t be making these remarks.  The engraver of a fine picture revises, and revises, and revises—­and then revises, and revises, and revises; and then repeats.  And always the charm of that picture grows, under his hand.  It was good enough before—­told its story, and was beautiful.  True:  and a lovely girl is lovely, with freckles; but she isn’t at her level best with them.

This is not hypercriticism; you have had training enough to know that.