l, in New York:

Dec. 12, '92.

DEAR MR. HALL,--November check received.

I have lent the Californian's Story to Arthur Stedman for his Author
Club Book, so your suggestion that my new spring-book bear that name
arrives too late, as he probably would not want us to use that story in
a book of ours until the Author book had had its run. That is for him to
decide--and I don't want him hampered at all in his decision. I, for my
part, prefer the "$1,000,000 Banknote and Other Stories" by Mark Twain
as a title, but above my judgment I prefer yours. I mean this--it is not
taffy.

I told Arthur to leave out the former squib or paragraph and use only
the Californian's Story. Tell him this is because I am going to use that
in the book I am now writing.

I finished "Those Extraordinary Twins" night before last makes 60 or
80,000 words--haven't counted.

The last third of it suits me to a dot. I begin, to-day, to entirely
recast and re-write the first two-thirds--new plan, with two minor
characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and
the Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place.

The minor character will now become the chiefest, and I will name the
story after him--"Puddn'head Wilson."

Merry Xmas to you, and great prosperity and felicity!

S. L. CLEMENS.

XXXIII. LETTERS, 1893, TO MR. HALL, MRS. CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE.
BUSINESS TROUBLES. "PUDD'NHEAD WILSON." "JOAN OF ARC." AT THE PLAYERS,
NEW YORK.

The reader may have suspected that young Mr. Hall in New York was having
his troubles. He was by this time one-third owner in the business of
Charles L. Webster & Co., as well as its general manager. The business
had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the
publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of
the typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents'
commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large
volumes constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster
had undertaken to place in a million American homes. There was plenty
of sale for it--indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on
payments--small monthly payments--while the cost of manufacture and
the liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require a
considerable period before the dribble of coll