Authors, publishers and the public have always been damaged by the copyright laws.  The proposed amendment will advantage all three—­the public most of all.  I think Congress will pass it and settle the vexed question permanently.

I shall need your assent and the assent of about a dozen other authors.  Also the assent of all the large firms of the 300 publishers.  These authors and publishers will furnish said assent I am sure.  Not even the pirates will be able to furnish a serious objection, I think.

Come along.  This place seemed at its best when all around was summer-green; later it seemed at its best when all around was burning with the autumn splendors; and now once more it seems at its best, with the trees naked and the ground a painter’s palette. 
                                   Yours ever,
          
                                   mark.

Clemens was a great admirer of the sea stories of W. W. Jacobs and generally kept one or more of this author’s volumes in reach of his bed, where most of his reading was done.  The acknowledgment that follows was sent when he had finished Salthaven.

To W. W. Jacobs, in England: 

Redding, Conn,
Oct. 28, ’08. 
Dear Mr. Jacobs,—­It has a delightful look.  I will not venture to say how delightful, because the words would sound extravagant, and would thereby lose some of their strength and to that degree misrepresent me.  It is my conviction that Dialstone Lane holds the supremacy over all purely humorous books in our language, but I feel about Salthaven as the Cape Cod poet feels about Simon Hanks: 

               “The Lord knows all things, great and small,
               With doubt he’s not perplexed: 
               ’Tis Him alone that knows it all
               But Simon Hanks comes next.”

The poet was moved by envy and malice and jealousy, but I am not:  I place Salthaven close up next to Dialstone because I think it has a fair and honest right to that high position.  I have kept the other book moving; I shall begin to hand this one around now.

And many thanks to you for remembering me.

This house is out in the solitudes of the woods and the hills, an hour
and a half from New York, and I mean to stay in it winter and summer the
rest of my days.  I beg you to come and help occupy it a few days the
next time you visit the U.S. 
                         Sincerely yours,
                                   S. L. Clemens.

One of the attractions of Stormfield was a beautiful mantel in the billiard room, presented by the Hawaiian Promotion Committee.  It had not arrived when the rest of the house was completed, but came in time to be set in place early in the morning of the owner’s seventy-third birthday.  It was made of a variety of Hawaiian woods, and was the work of a native carver, F. M. Otremba.  Clemens was deeply touched by the offering from those “western isles”—­the memory of which was always so sweet to him.

To Mr. Wood, in Hawaii: