If I had time, I would say a word about this curative system here.  The people actually do several of the great things the Christian Scientists pretend to do.  You wish to advise with a physician about it?  Certainly.  There is no objection.  He knows next to something about his own trade, but that will not embarrass him in framing a verdict about this one.  I respect your superstitions—­we all have them.  It would be quite natural for the cautious Chinaman to ask his native priest to instruct him as to the value of the new religious specialty which the Western missionary is trying to put on the market, before investing in it. (He would get a verdict.)
                         Love to you all! 
                                   Always Yours
          
                                        mark.

Howells wrote that he was going on a reading-tour-dreading it, of course-and asking for any advice that Clemens felt qualified to give.  Naturally, Clemens gave him the latest he had in stock, without realizing, perhaps, that he was recommending an individual practice which few would be likely to imitate.  Nevertheless, what he says is interesting.

To W. D. Howells, in America: 

Sanna, Sweden, Sept. 26, ’99.  Dear Howells,—­Get your lecture by heart—­it will pay you.  I learned a trick in Vienna—­by accident—­which I wish I had learned years ago.  I meant to read from a Tauchnitz, because I knew I hadn’t well memorized the pieces; and I came on with the book and read a few sentences, then remembered that the sketch needed a few words of explanatory introduction; and so, lowering the book and now and then unconsciously using it to gesture with, I talked the introduction, and it happened to carry me into the sketch itself, and then I went on, pretending that I was merely talking extraneous matter and would come to the sketch presently.  It was a beautiful success.  I knew the substance of the sketch and the telling phrases of it; and so, the throwing of the rest of it into informal talk as I went along limbered it up and gave it the snap and go and freshness of an impromptu.  I was to read several pieces, and I played the same game with all of them, and always the audience thought I was being reminded of outside things and throwing them in, and was going to hold up the book and begin on the sketch presently—­and so I always got through the sketch before they were entirely sure that it had begun.  I did the same thing in Budapest and had the same good time over again.  It’s a new dodge, and the best one that was ever invented.  Try it.  You’ll never lose your audience—­not even for a moment.  Their attention is fixed, and never wavers.  And that is not the case where one reads from book or Ms., or where he stands up without a note and frankly exposes the fact, by his confident manner and smooth phrasing, that he is not improvising, but reciting from memory.  And in the heat of telling a thing that is memorised in substance only, one flashes out the happiest suddenly-begotten phrases every now and then!  Try it.  Such a phrase has a life and sparkle about it that twice as good a one could not exhibit if prepared beforehand, and it “fetches” an audience in such an enthusing and inspiring and uplifting way that that lucky phrase breeds another one, sure.