Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

He did not make the journey down the river planned for that year.
He had always hoped to make another steamboat trip with Bixby, but
one thing and another interfered and he did not go again.

Authors were always sending their books to Mark Twain to read, and
no busy man was ever more kindly disposed toward such offerings,
more generously considerate of the senders. Louis Pendleton was a
young unknown writer in 1888, but Clemens took time to read his
story carefully, and to write to him about it a letter that cost
precious time, thought, and effort. It must have rejoiced the young
man's heart to receive a letter like that, from one whom all young
authors held supreme.

*****

To Louis Pendleton, in Georgia:

ELMIRA, N. Y., Aug. 4, '88.

MY DEAR SIR,--I found your letter an hour ago among some others which
had lain forgotten a couple of weeks, and I at once stole time enough to
read Ariadne. Stole is the right word, for the summer "Vacation" is
the only chance I get for work; so, no minute subtracted from work is
borrowed, it is stolen. But this time I do not repent. As a rule,
people don't send me books which I can thank them for, and so I
say nothing--which looks uncourteous. But I thank you. Ariadne is a
beautiful and satisfying story; and true, too--which is the best part of
a story; or indeed of any other thing. Even liars have to admit that,
if they are intelligent liars; I mean in their private [the word
conscientious written but erased] intervals. (I struck that word out
because a man's private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is
to him the truth, always; what he speaks--but these be platitudes.)

If you want me to pick some flaws--very well--but I do it unwillingly.
I notice one thing--which one may notice also in my books, and in all
books whether written by man or God: trifling carelessness of statement
or Expression. If I think that you meant that she took the lizard from
the water which she had drawn from the well, it is evidence--it is
almost proof--that your words were not as clear as they should have
been. True, it is only a trifling thing; but so is mist on a mirror. I
would have hung the pail on Ariadne's arm. You did not deceive me when
you said that she carried it under her arm, for I knew