hat it was a Mark Twain play. In return for this slight favor the
manager sent an invitation for Mark Twain to come and see the play
--to be present on the opening night, as it were, at his (the
manager's) expense. He added that if the play should be a go in the
cities there might be some "arrangement" of profits. Apparently
these inducements did not appeal to Mark Twain. The long unmailed
reply is the more interesting, but probably the briefer one that
follows it was quite as effective.

Unmailed Answer:

HARTFORD, Sept. 8, '87.

DEAR SIR,--And so it has got around to you, at last; and you also have
"taken the liberty." You are No. 1365. When 1364 sweeter and better
people, including the author, have "tried" to dramatize Tom Sawyer and
did not arrive, what sort of show do you suppose you stand? That is a
book, dear sir, which cannot be dramatized. One might as well try to
dramatize any other hymn. Tom Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose
form to give it a worldly air.

Why the pale doubt that flitteth dim and nebulous athwart the forecastle
of your third sentence? Have no fears. Your piece will be a Go. It will
go out the back door on the first night. They've all done it--the
1364. So will 1365. Not one of us ever thought of the simple device
of half-soling himself with a stove-lid. Ah, what suffering a little
hindsight would have saved us. Treasure this hint.

How kind of you to invite me to the funeral. Go to; I have attended a
thousand of them. I have seen Tom Sawyer's remains in all the different
kinds of dramatic shrouds there are. You cannot start anything fresh.
Are you serious when you propose to pay my expence--if that is the
Susquehannian way of spelling it? And can you be aware that I charge a
hundred dollars a mile when I travel for pleasure? Do you realize that
it is 432 miles to Susquehanna? Would it be handy for you to send me
the $43,200 first, so I could be counting it as I come along; because
railroading is pretty dreary to a sensitive nature when there's nothing
sordid to buck at for Zeitvertreib.

Now as I understand it, dear and magnanimous 1365, you are going to
recreate Tom Sawyer dramatically, and then do me the compliment to put
me in the bills as father of this shady offspring. Sir, do you know that
this kind of a compliment has destroyed people before now? Listen.

Twenty