Twain's friends was Henniker-Heaton, the so-called
"Father of Penny Postage" between England and America. When, after
long years of effort, he succeeded in getting the rate established,
he at once bent his energies in the direction of cheap cable service
and a letter from him came one day to Stormfield concerning his new
plans. This letter happened to be over-weight, which gave Mark
Twain a chance for some amusing exaggerations at his expense.

*****

To Henniker-Heaton, in London:

STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
Jan. 18, 1909.

DEAR HENNIKER-HEATON,--I do hope you will succeed to your heart's desire
in your cheap-cablegram campaign, and I feel sure you will. Indeed
your cheap-postage victory, achieved in spite of a quarter-century of
determined opposition, is good and rational prophecy that you will.
Wireless, not being as yet imprisoned in a Chinese wall of private cash
and high-placed and formidable influence, will come to your aid and make
your new campaign briefer and easier than the other one was.

Now then, after uttering my serious word, am I privileged to be
frivolous for a moment? When you shall have achieved cheap telegraphy,
are you going to employ it for just your own selfish profit and other
people's pecuniary damage, the way you are doing with your cheap
postage? You get letter-postage reduced to 2 cents an ounce, then you
mail me a 4-ounce letter with a 2-cent stamp on it, and I have to pay
the extra freight at this end of the line. I return your envelope for
inspection. Look at it. Stamped in one place is a vast "T," and under it
the figures "40," and under those figures appears an "L," a sinister and
suspicious and mysterious L. In another place, stamped within a circle,
in offensively large capitals, you find the words "DUE 8 CENTS."
Finally, in the midst of a desert space up nor-noreastard from that
circle you find a figure "3" of quite unnecessarily aggressive and
insolent magnitude--and done with a blue pencil, so as to be as
conspicuous as possible. I inquired about these strange signs and
symbols of the postman. He said they were P. O. Department signals for
his instruction.

"Instruction for what?"

"To get extra postage."

"Is it so? Explain. Tell me about the large T and the 40.

"It's short for Take 40--or as we postmen say, grab 40"

"Go on, please, while I thi