s wrong--3 books and 13
mag. articles--and could only make 2 little wee things, 1500
words altogether, succeed:--only that out of piles and stacks of
diligently-wrought MS., the labor of 6 weeks' unremitting effort.
I could make all of those things go if I would take the trouble to
re-begin each one half a dozen times on a new plan. But none of them was
important enough except one: the story I (in the wrong form) mapped out
in Paris three or four years ago and told you about in New York under
seal of confidence--no other person knows of it but Mrs. Clemens--the
story to be called "Which was the Dream?"

A week ago I examined the MS--10,000 words--and saw that the plan was
a totally impossible one-for me; but a new plan suggested itself,
and straightway the tale began to slide from the pen with ease and
confidence. I think I've struck the right one this time. I have already
put 12,000 words of it on paper and Mrs. Clemens is pretty outspokenly
satisfied with it-a hard critic to content. I feel sure that all of the
first half of the story--and I hope three-fourths--will be comedy; but
by the former plan the whole of it (except the first 3 chapters) would
have been tragedy and unendurable, almost. I think I can carry the
reader a long way before he suspects that I am laying a tragedy-trap. In
the present form I could spin 16 books out of it with comfort and joy;
but I shall deny myself and restrict it to one. (If you should see
a little short story in a magazine in the autumn called "My Platonic
Sweetheart" written 3 weeks ago) that is not this one. It may have been
a suggester, though.

I expect all these singular privacies to interest you, and you are not
to let on that they don't.

We are leaving, this afternoon, for Ischl, to use that as a base for the
baggage, and then gad around ten days among the lakes and mountains to
rest-up Mrs. Clemens, who is jaded with housekeeping. I hope I can get a
chance to work a little in spots--I can't tell. But you do it--therefore
why should you think I can't?

[Remainder missing.]

The dream story was never completed. It was the same that he had
worked on in London, and perhaps again in Switzerland. It would be
tried at other times and in other forms, but it never seemed to
accommodate itself to a central idea, so that the good writing in it
eventually went to waste. The short story mentioned, "My Platonic
Sweetheart