.)

If you are diffident, I suspect that you ought to let Osgood be your
magazine-agent. He makes those people pay three or four times as much as
an article is worth, whereas I never had the cheek to make them pay more
than double.

Yrs Sincerely
S. L. CLEMENS.

"My backwardness is an affliction," wrote Harris..... "The ordeal
of appearing on the stage would be a terrible one, but my experience
is that when a diffident man does become familiar with his
surroundings he has more impudence than his neighbors. Extremes
meet."

He was sorely tempted, but his courage became as water at the
thought of footlights and assembled listeners. Once in New York he
appears to have been caught unawares at a Tile Club dinner and made
to tell a story, but his agony was such that at the prospect of a
similar ordeal in Boston he avoided that city and headed straight
for Georgia and safety.

The New Orleans excursion with Osgood, as planned by Clemens, proved
a great success. The little party took the steamer Gold Dust from
St. Louis down river toward New Orleans. Clemens was quickly
recognized, of course, and his assumed name laid aside. The author
of "Uncle Remus" made the trip to New Orleans. George W. Cable was
there at the time, and we may believe that in the company of Mark
Twain and Osgood those Southern authors passed two or three
delightful days. Clemens also met his old teacher Bixby in New
Orleans, and came back up the river with him, spending most of his
time in the pilot-house, as in the old days. It was a glorious
trip, and, reaching St. Louis, he continued it northward, stopping
off at Hannibal and Quincy.'

*****

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

QUINCY, ILL. May 17, '82.

Livy darling, I am desperately homesick. But I have promised Osgood, and
must stick it out; otherwise I would take the train at once and break
for home.

I have spent three delightful days in Hannibal, loitering around all day
long, examining the old localities and talking with the grey-heads who
were boys and girls with me 30 or 40 years ago. It has been a moving
time. I spent my nights with John and Helen Garth, three miles from
town, in their spacious and beautiful house. They were children with me,
and af