And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author’s widow (General Grant’s) the largest copyright checks this world has seen—­aggregating more than L80,000 in the first year.

And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.

Now then; as the most valuable capital or culture or education usable in the building of novels is personal experience I ought to be well equipped for that trade.

I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real, none of it artificial, for I don’t know anything about books.

[No signature.]

Clemens for several years had been bothered by rheumatism in his shoulder.  The return now to the steady use of the pen aggravated his trouble, and at times he was nearly disabled.  The phonograph for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark Twain was always ready for any innovation.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Hartford, Feb. 28, ’91.  Dear Howells,—­Won’t you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New England Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary conversation-voice and see if another person (who didn’t hear you do it) can take the words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them to you.  If the experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a message which you don’t hear, and see if afterward you can get it out without difficulty) won’t you then ask them on what terms they will rent me a phonograph for 3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry 75,000 words. 175 cylinders, ain’t it?

I don’t want to erase any of them.  My right arm is nearly disabled by rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies of it—­no, I mean a million—­next fall) I feel sure I can dictate the book into a phonograph if I don’t have to yell.  I write 2,000 words a day; I think I can dictate twice as many.

But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you—­go ahead and do
it, all the same. 
                                   Ys ever
          
                                   mark.

Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a few days later reported results.  He wrote:  “I talked your letter into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech.  Then the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell.  Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out.  I send you the result.  There is a mistake of one word.  I think that if you have the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is perfectly easy.  It wouldn’t fatigue me to talk for an hour as I did.”

Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least
not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily.  His
early experience with it, however, seems interesting.