er, was
distinguished in a special way: it contains Mark Twain's
first utterance in print on the subject of copyright, a
matter in which he never again lost interest. The absurdity
and injustice of the copyright laws both amused and
irritated him, and in the course of time he would be largely
instrumental in their improvement. In the book his open
petition to Congress that all property rights, as well as
literary ownership, should be put on the copyright basis and
limited to a "beneficent term of forty-two years," was more
or less of a joke, but, like so many of Mark Twain's jokes,
it was founded on reason and justice.

He had another idea, that was not a joke: an early plan in
the direction of international copyright. It was to be a
petition signed by the leading American authors, asking the
United States to declare itself to be the first to stand for
right and justice by enacting laws against the piracy of
foreign books. It was a rather utopian scheme, as most
schemes for moral progress are, in their beginning. It
would not be likely ever to reach Congress, but it would
appeal to Howells and his Cambridge friends. Clemens wrote,
outlining his plan of action.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Sept. 18, 1875.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My plan is this--you are to get Mr. Lowell and Mr.
Longfellow to be the first signers of my copyright petition; you must
sign it yourself and get Mr. Whittier to do likewise. Then Holmes will
sign--he said he would if he didn't have to stand at the head. Then
I'm fixed. I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages and send him
personally to every author of distinction in the country, and corral
the rest of the signatures. Then I'll have the whole thing lithographed
(about a thousand copies) and move upon the President and Congress in
person, but in the subordinate capacity of a party who is merely the
agent of better and wiser men--men whom the country cannot venture to
laugh at.

I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (and if
he should ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should
blush--but still I would frame it.)

Next I would get a prime leader in Congress: I would also see that votes
enough to carry the measure were privately secured before the bill was
offered. This I woul