ns, my one claim on immortality is that
I declined your first book."

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Apl. 25, 1876

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks for giving me the place of honor.

Bliss made a failure in the matter of getting Tom Sawyer ready on
time--the engravers assisting, as usual. I went down to see how much of
a delay there was going to be, and found that the man had not even put
a canvasser on, or issued an advertisement yet--in fact, that the
electrotypes would not all be done for a month! But of course the
main fact was that no canvassing had been done--because a subscription
harvest is before publication, (not after, when people have discovered
how bad one's book is.)

Well, yesterday I put in the Courant an editorial paragraph stating that
Tam Sawyer is "ready to issue, but publication is put off in order to
secure English copyright by simultaneous publication there and here. The
English edition is unavoidably delayed."

You see, part of that is true. Very well. When I observed that my
"Sketches" had dropped from a sale of 6 or 7000 a month down to 1200 a
month, I said "this ain't no time to be publishing books; therefore, let
Tom lie still till Autumn, Mr. Bliss, and make a holiday book of him to
beguile the young people withal."

I shall print items occasionally, still further delaying Tom, till I
ease him down to Autumn without shock to the waiting world.

As to that "Literary Nightmare" proposition. I'm obliged to withhold
consent, for what seems a good reason--to wit: A single page of
horse-car poetry is all that the average reader can stand, without
nausea; now, to stack together all of it that has been written, and
then add it to my article would be to enrage and disgust each and every
reader and win the deathless enmity of the lot.

Even if that reason were insufficient, there would still be a sufficient
reason left, in the fact that Mr. Carlton seems to be the publisher of
the magazine in which it is proposed to publish this horse-car matter.
Carlton insulted me in Feb. 1867, and so when the day arrives that sees
me doing him a civility I shall feel that I am ready for Paradise, since
my list of possible and impossible forgivenesses will then be complete.

Mrs. Clemens says my version of the blindfold novelette "A Murder and A
Marriage" is "good." Pretty strong language--for her.

The Fieldses are coming down to the play tom