dialogue out of it, but I got only 15 loosely written pages--they saved
me half a days work. It was the cursing phonograph. There was abundance
of good dialogue, but it couldn't befitted into the new conditions of
the story.

Oh, look here--I did to-day what I have several times in past years
thought of doing: answered an interviewing proposition from a rich
newspaper with the reminder that they had not stated the terms; that my
time was all occupied with writing, at good pay, and that as talking was
harder work I should not care to venture it unless I knew the pay was
going to be proportionately higher. I wish I had thought of this the
other day when Charley Stoddard turned a pleasant Englishman loose on me
and I couldn't think of any rational excuse.

Ys Ever
MARK.

Clemens had finished his Sellers book and had disposed of the serial
rights to the McClure syndicate. The house in Hartford was closed
early in June, and on the 6th the family, with one maid, Katie
Leary, sailed on the Gascogne. Two weeks later they had begun a
residence abroad which was to last for more than nine years.

It was not easy to get to work in Europe. Clemens's arm remained
lame, and any effort at writing brought suffering. The Century
Magazine proposed another set of letters, but by the end of July he
had barely begun on those promised to McClure and Laffan. In
August, however, he was able to send three: one from Aix about the
baths there, another from Bayreuth concerning the Wagner festival,
and a third from Marienbad, in Bohemia, where they rested for a
time. He decided that he would arrange for no more European letters
when the six were finished, but would gather material for a book.
He would take a courier and a kodak and go tramping again in some
fashion that would be interesting to do and to write.

The idea finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the
family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman.
He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged
Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European
trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought
for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their
pilot. It was the morning