ith this issue of the
magazine. To be a pirate on a low salary, and with no share in the
profits of the business, used to be my idea of an uncomfortable
occupation, but I have other views now. To be a monthly humorist in
a cheerless time is drearier.

Without doubt he felt a glad relief in being rid of this recurrent,
imperative demand. He wrote to Orion that he had told the Galaxy people
he would not write another article, long or short, for less than $500,
and preferred not to do it at all.

The Galaxy department and the work on the Express were Mark Twain's
farewell to journalism; for the "Memoranda" was essentially journalistic,
almost as much so, and as liberally, as his old-time Enterprise position.
Apparently he wrote with absolute freedom, unhampered by editorial policy
or restriction. The result was not always pleasant, and it was not
always refined. We may be certain that it was because of Mrs. Clemens's
heavy burdens that year, and her consequent inability to exert a
beneficent censorship, that more than one--more than a dozen--of the
"Memoranda" contributions were permitted to see the light of print.

As a whole, the literary result of Mark Twain's Buffalo period does not
reach the high standard of The Innocents Abroad. It was a retrogression
--in some measure a return to his earlier form. It had been done under
pressure, under heavy stress of mind, as he said. Also there was another
reason; neither the subject treated nor the environment of labor had
afforded that lofty inspiration which glorified every step of the Quaker
City journey. Buffalo was a progressive city--a beautiful city, as
American cities go--but it was hardly an inspiring city for literature,
and a dull, dingy newspaper office was far, very far, from the pleasant
decks of the Quaker City, the camp-fires of Syria, the blue sky and sea
of the Medit&ranean.

LXXXII

THE WRITING OF "ROUGHING IT"

The third book published by Mark Twain was not the Western book he was
preparing for Bliss. It was a small volume, issued by Sheldon & Co.,
entitled Mark Twain's Autobiography (Burlesque) and First Romance. The
Romance was the "Awful, Terrible Medieval Romance" which had appeared in
the Express at the beginning of 1870. The burlesque autobiography had
not previously appeared. The two made a thin little book, which, in
addition to its literary features, had running through it a series of
full-page, irrelevant pictures---carto