fficiency of reckless daring to make you comfortable and at
ease before an audience. Well, I have thought out a device whereby I
believe we can get around that difficulty. I will explain when I see
you.

Jo says you want to go to Canada within a month or six weeks--I forget
just exactly what he did say; but he intimated the trip could be delayed
a while, if necessary. If this is so, suppose you meet Osgood and me in
New Orleans early in May--say somewhere between the 1st and 6th?

It will be well worth your while to do this, because the author who
goes to Canada unposted, will not know what course to pursue [to secure
copyright] when he gets there; he will find himself in a hopeless
confusion as to what is the correct thing to do. Now Osgood is the only
man in America, who can lay out your course for you and tell you exactly
what to do. Therefore, you just come to New Orleans and have a talk with
him.

Our idea is to strike across lots and reach St. Louis the 20th of
April--thence we propose to drift southward, stopping at some town a few
hours or a night, every day, and making notes.

To escape the interviewers, I shall follow my usual course and use a
fictitious name (C. L. Samuel, of New York.) I don't know what Osgood's
name will be, but he can't use his own.

If you see your way to meet us in New Orleans, drop me a line, now, and
as we approach that city I will telegraph you what day we shall arrive
there.

I would go to Atlanta if I could, but shan't be able. We shall go back
up the river to St. Paul, and thence by rail X-lots home.

(I am making this letter so dreadfully private and confidential because
my movements must be kept secret, else I shan't be able to pick up the
kind of book-material I want.)

If you are diffident, I suspect that you ought to let Osgood be your
magazine-agent. He makes those people pay three or four times as much as
an article is worth, whereas I never had the cheek to make them pay more
than double.

Yrs Sincerely
S. L. CLEMENS.

"My backwardness is an affliction," wrote Harris..... "The ordeal
of appearing on the stage would be a terrible one, but my experience
is that when a diffident man does become familiar with his
surroundings he has more impudence than his neighbors. Extremes
meet."

He was sorely tempted, but his courage became as water at the
thought of