te a letter to Li Hung Chang, advising the continuance of
the Mission, asking only that I would prepare him some notes, giving him
points to go by. Thus we succeeded easily beyond our expectations,
thanks, very largely, to Clemens's assistance.

Clemens wrote Howells of the interview, detailing at some length
Twichell's comical mixture of delight and chagrin at not being given time
to air the fund of prepared statistics with which he had come loaded. It
was as if he had come to borrow a dollar and had been offered a thousand
before he could unfold his case.

CXXXII

A NEW PUBLISHER

It was near the end of the year that Clemens wrote to his mother:

I have two stories, and by the verbal agreement they are both going
into the same book; but Livy says they're not, and by George! she
ought to know. She says they're going into separate books, and that
one of them is going to be elegantly gotten up, even if the elegance
of it eats up the publisher's profits and mine too.

I anticipate that publisher's melancholy surprise when he calls here
Tuesday. However, let him suffer; it is his own fault. People who
fix up agreements with me without first finding out what Livy's
plans are take their fate into their own hands.

I said two stories, but one of them is only half done; two or three
months' work on it yet. I shall tackle it Wednesday or Thursday;
that is, if Livy yields and allows both stories to go in one book,
which I hope she won't.

The reader may surmise that the finished story--the highly regarded
story--was 'The Prince and the Pauper'. The other tale--the unfinished
and less considered one was 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. Nobody
appears to have been especially concerned about Huck, except, possibly,
the publisher.

The publisher was not the American Company. Elisha Bliss, after long ill
health, had died that fall, and this fact, in connection with a growing
dissatisfaction over the earlier contracts, had induced Clemens to listen
to offers from other makers of books. The revelation made by the
"half-profit" returns from A Tramp Abroad meant to him, simply that the
profits had not been fairly apportioned, and he was accordingly hostile.
To Orion he wrote that, had Bliss lived, he would have remained with the
company and made it reimburse him for his losses, but that as matters
stood he would sever the long connection. It seemed a pity, later, th