I am powerful glad to see that No. 1 reads a nation sight better in print than it did in Ms. I told Bentley we’d send him the slips, each time, 6 weeks before day of publication.  We can do that can’t we?  Two months ahead would be still better I suppose, but I don’t know.

“Ah Sin” went a-booming at the Fifth Avenue.  The reception of Col.  Sellers was calm compared to it.

The criticisms were just; the criticisms of the great New York dailies are always just, intelligent, and square and honest—­notwithstanding, by a blunder which nobody was seriously to blame for, I was made to say exactly the opposite of this in a newspaper some time ago.  Never said it at all, and moreover I never thought it.  I could not publicly correct it before the play appeared in New York, because that would look as if I had really said that thing and then was moved by fears for my pocket and my reputation to take it back.  But I can correct it now, and shall do it; for now my motives cannot be impugned.  When I began this letter, it had not occurred to me to use you in this connection, but it occurs to me now.  Your opinion and mine, uttered a year ago, and repeated more than once since, that the candor and ability of the New York critics were beyond question, is a matter which makes it proper enough that I should speak through you at this time.  Therefore if you will print this paragraph somewhere, it may remove the impression that I say unjust things which I do not think, merely for the pleasure of talking.

There, now, Can’t you say—­

“In a letter to Mr. Howells of the Atlantic Monthly, Mark Twain describes the reception of the new comedy ‘Ali Sin,’ and then goes on to say:”  etc.

Beginning at the star with the words, “The criticisms were just.”  Mrs. Clemens says, “Don’t ask that of Mr. Howells—­it will be disagreeable to him.”  I hadn’t thought of it, but I will bet two to one on the correctness of her instinct.  We shall see.

Will you cut that paragraph out of this letter and precede it with the remarks suggested (or with better ones,) and send it to the Globe or some other paper?  You can’t do me a bigger favor; and yet if it is in the least disagreeable, you mustn’t think of it.  But let me know, right away, for I want to correct this thing before it grows stale again.  I explained myself to only one critic (the World)—­the consequence was a noble notice of the play.  This one called on me, else I shouldn’t have explained myself to him.

I have been putting in a deal of hard work on that play in New York, but it is full of incurable defects.

My old Plunkett family seemed wonderfully coarse and vulgar on the stage, but it was because they were played in such an outrageously and inexcusably coarse way.  The Chinaman is killingly funny.  I don’t know when I have enjoyed anything as much as I did him.  The people say there isn’t enough of him in the piece.  That’s a triumph—­there’ll never be any more of him in it.