.

My book is type-written and ready for print--"Pudd'nhead Wilson-a Tale."
(Or, "Those Extraordinary Twins," if preferable.)

It makes 82,500 words--12,000 more than Huck Finn. But I don't know what
to do with it. Mrs. Clemens thinks it wouldn't do to go to the Am.
Pub. Co. or anywhere outside of our own house; we have no subscription
machinery, and a book in the trade is a book thrown away, as far as
money-profit goes. I am in a quandary. Give me a lift out of it.

I will mail the book to you and get you to examine it and see if it is
good or if it is bad. I think it is good, and I thought the Claimant
bad, when I saw it in print; but as for real judgment, I think I am
destitute of it.

I am writing a companion to the Prince and Pauper, which is half done
and will make 200,000 words; and I have had the idea that if it were
gotten up in handsome style, with many illustrations and put at a high
enough price maybe the L. A. L. canvassers would take it and run it with
that book. Would they? It could be priced anywhere from $4 up to $10,
according to how it was gotten up, I suppose.

I don't want it to go into a magazine.

S. L. C.

I am having several short things type-"writered." I will send them to
you presently. I like the Century and Harper's, but I don't know that
I have any business to object to the Cosmopolitan if they pay as good
rates. I suppose a man ought to stick to one magazine, but that may be
only superstition. What do you think?

S. L. C.

"The companion to The Prince and the Pauper," mentioned in this
letter, was the story of Joan of Arc, perhaps the most finished of
Mark Twain's literary productions. His interest in Joan had been
first awakened when, as a printer's apprentice in Hannibal, he had
found blowing along the street a stray leaf from some printed story
of her life. That fragment of history had pictured Joan in prison,
insulted and mistreated by ruffians. It had aroused all the
sympathy and indignation in the boy, Sam Clemens; also, it had
awakened his interest in history, and, indeed, in all literature.

His love for the character of Joan had grown with the years, until
in time he had conceived the idea of writing her story. As far back
as the early eighties he had collected material for it, and had
begun to make the notes.