Dear sir,—­I have received your proposition—­which you have imitated from a pauper London periodical which had previously imitated the idea of this sort of mendicancy from seventh-rate American journalism, where it originated as a variation of the inexpensive “interview.”

Why do you buy Associated Press dispatches?  To make your paper the more salable, you answer.  But why don’t you try to beg them?  Why do you discriminate?  I can sell my stuff; why should I give it to you?  Why don’t you ask me for a shirt?  What is the difference between asking me for the worth of a shirt and asking me for the shirt itself?  Perhaps you didn’t know you were begging.  I would not use that argument—­it makes the user a fool.  The passage of poetry—­or prose, if you will—­which has taken deepest root in my thought, and which I oftenest return to and dwell upon with keenest no matter what, is this:  That the proper place for journalists who solicit literary charity is on the street corner with their hats in their hands.

Mailed Answer: 

Dear sir,—­Your favor of recent date is received, but I am obliged by press of work to decline.

The manager of a traveling theatrical company wrote that he had taken the liberty of dramatizing Tom Sawyer, and would like also the use of the author’s name—­the idea being to convey to the public that it was a Mark Twain play.  In return for this slight favor the manager sent an invitation for Mark Twain to come and see the play —­to be present on the opening night, as it were, at his (the manager’s) expense.  He added that if the play should be a go in the cities there might be some “arrangement” of profits.  Apparently these inducements did not appeal to Mark Twain.  The long unmailed reply is the more interesting, but probably the briefer one that follows it was quite as effective.

Unmailed Answer: 

Hartford, Sept. 8, ’87.  Dear sir,—­And so it has got around to you, at last; and you also have “taken the liberty.”  You are No. 1365.  When 1364 sweeter and better people, including the author, have “tried” to dramatize Tom Sawyer and did not arrive, what sort of show do you suppose you stand?  That is a book, dear sir, which cannot be dramatized.  One might as well try to dramatize any other hymn.  Tom Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose form to give it a worldly air.

Why the pale doubt that flitteth dim and nebulous athwart the forecastle of your third sentence?  Have no fears.  Your piece will be a Go.  It will go out the back door on the first night.  They’ve all done it —­the 1364.  So will 1365.  Not one of us ever thought of the simple device of half-soling himself with a stove-lid.  Ah, what suffering a little hindsight would have saved us.  Treasure this hint.