y her. It seemed to take away from her being the owner of 'em
like. In this way, the question got into my head: Couldn't I have a book
new-made express for her, which she should be the first to read?

It pleased me, that thought did; and as I never was a man to let a
thought sleep (you must wake up all the whole family of thoughts you've
got and burn their nightcaps, or you won't do in the Cheap Jack line), I
set to work at it. Considering that I was in the habit of changing so
much about the country, and that I should have to find out a literary
character here to make a deal with, and another literary character there
to make a deal with, as opportunities presented, I hit on the plan that
this same book should be a general miscellaneous lot,--like the razors,
flat-iron, chronometer watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, and looking-
glass,--and shouldn't be offered as a single indiwidual article, like the
spectacles or the gun. When I had come to that conclusion, I come to
another, which shall likewise be yours.

Often had I regretted that she never had heard me on the footboard, and
that she never could hear me. It ain't that _I_ am vain, but that _you_
don't like to put your own light under a bushel. What's the worth of
your reputation, if you can't convey the reason for it to the person you
most wish to value it? Now I'll put it to you. Is it worth sixpence,
fippence, fourpence, threepence, twopence, a penny, a halfpenny, a
farthing? No, it ain't. Not worth a farthing. Very well, then. My
conclusion was that I would begin her book with some account of myself.
So that, through reading a specimen or two of me on the footboard, she
might form an idea of my merits there. I was aware that I couldn't do
myself justice. A man can't write his eye (at least _I_ don't know how
to), nor yet can a man write his voice, nor the rate of his talk, nor the
quickness of his action, nor his general spicy way. But he can write his
turns of speech, when he is a public speaker,--and indeed I have heard
that he very often does, before he speaks 'em.

Well! Having formed that resolution, then come the question of a name.
How did I hammer that hot iron into shape? This way. The most difficult
explanation I had ever had with her was, how I come to be called Doctor,
and yet was no Doctor. After all, I felt that I had failed of getting it
correctly into her mind, with my utmost pains. But trusting to her
improvement in the two