proclaims the Republic of the United
States of Brazil, and stand by to defend the Yankee from plagiarism.
There is merely a resemblance of ideas, nothing more. The Yankee's
proclamation was already in print a week ago. This is merely one of
those odd coincidences which are always turning up. Come, protect
the Yank from that cheapest and easiest of all charges--plagiarism.
Otherwise, you see, he will have to protect himself by charging
approximate and indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our
majestic twin down yonder, and then there might be war, or some similar
annoyance.

Have you noticed the rumor that the Portuguese throne is unsteady, and
that the Portuguese slaves are getting restive? Also, that the head
slave-driver of Europe, Alexander III, has so reduced his usual monthly
order for chains that the Russian foundries are running on only half
time now? Also that other rumor that English nobility acquired an added
stench the other day--and had to ship it to India and the continent
because there wasn't any more room for it at home? Things are working.
By and by there is going to be an emigration, may be. Of course we shall
make no preparation; we never do. In a few years from now we shall have
nothing but played-out kings and dukes on the police, and driving the
horse-cars, and whitewashing fences, and in fact overcrowding all the
avenues of unskilled labor; and then we shall wish, when it is too late,
that we had taken common and reasonable precautions and drowned them at
Castle Garden.

There followed at this time a number of letters to Goodman, but as
there is much of a sameness in them, we need not print them all.
Clemens, in fact, kept the mails warm with letters bulging with
schemes for capitalization, and promising vast wealth to all
concerned. When the letters did not go fast enough he sent
telegrams. In one of the letters Goodman is promised "five hundred
thousand dollars out of the profits before we get anything
ourselves." One thing we gather from these letters is that Paige
has taken the machine apart again, never satisfied with its
perfection, or perhaps getting a hint that certain of its
perfections were not permanent. A letter at the end of November
seems worth preserving here.

*****

To Joseph T. Goodman, in California:

HARTFORD, Nov. 29, '89.

DEAR JOE, Things are