Patrick is one of the injudiciousest people I ever struck.  And I am the
other. 
                         Your Brother
          
                                   Sam.

The Yankee was now ready for publication, and advance sheets were already in the reviewers’ hands.  Just at this moment the Brazilian monarchy crumbled, and Clemens was moved to write Sylvester Baxter, of the Boston Herald, a letter which is of special interest in its prophecy of the new day, the dawn of which was even nearer than he suspected.

Dear Mr. Baxter, Another throne has gone down, and I swim in oceans of satisfaction.  I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron.  I believe I should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the swindles ever invented by man-monarchy.  It is enough to make a graven image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary kingship and so-called “nobility.”  It is enough to make the monarchs and nobles themselves laugh—­and in private they do; there can be no question about that.  I think there is only one funnier thing, and that is the spectacle of these bastard Americans—­these Hamersleys and Huntingtons and such—­offering cash, encumbered by themselves, for rotten carcases and stolen titles.  When our great brethren the disenslaved Brazilians frame their Declaration of Independence, I hope they will insert this missing link:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all monarchs are usurpers, and descendants of usurpers; for the reason that no throne was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only body possessing the legitimate right to set it up—­the numerical mass of the nation.”

You already have the advance sheets of my forthcoming book in your hands.  If you will turn to about the five hundredth page, you will find a state paper of my Connecticut Yankee in which he announces the dissolution of King Arthur’s monarchy and proclaims the English Republic.  Compare it with the state paper which announces the downfall of the Brazilian monarchy and proclaims the Republic of the United States of Brazil, and stand by to defend the Yankee from plagiarism.  There is merely a resemblance of ideas, nothing more.  The Yankee’s proclamation was already in print a week ago.  This is merely one of those odd coincidences which are always turning up.  Come, protect the Yank from that cheapest and easiest of all charges—­plagiarism.  Otherwise, you see, he will have to protect himself by charging approximate and indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our majestic twin down yonder, and then there might be war, or some similar annoyance.