ic, and with a good deal of confidence, by no means
unnecessary to commercial success. He placed this mental and physical
capital against Mark Twain's inspiration and financial backing, and the
combination of Charles L. Webster & Co. seemed likely to be a strong
one.

Already, in the spring of 1884., Webster had the new Mark Twain book,
'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', well in hand, and was on the watch
for promising subscription books by other authors. Clemens, with his
usual business vision and eye for results, with a generous disregard of
detail, was supervising the larger preliminaries, and fulminating at the
petty distractions and difficulties as they came along. Certain plays he
was trying to place were enough to keep him pretty thoroughly upset
during this period, and proof-reading never added to his happiness. To
Howells he wrote:

My days are given up to cursings, both loud and deep, for I am
reading the 'Huck Finn' proofs. They don't make a very great many
mistakes, but those that do occur are of a nature that make a man
swear his teeth loose.

Whereupon Howells promptly wrote him that he would help him out with the
Huck Finn proofs for the pleasure of reading the story. Clemens, among
other things, was trying to place a patent grape-scissors, invented by
Howells's father, so that there was, in some degree, an equivalent for
the heavy obligation. That it was a heavy one we gather from his fervent
acknowledgment:

It took my breath away, and I haven't recovered it yet, entirely--I
mean the generosity of your proposal to read the proofs of Huck
Finn.

Now, if you mean it, old man--if you are in earnest-proceed, in
God's name, and be by me forever blessed. I can't conceive of a
rational man deliberately piling such an atrocious job upon himself.
But if there be such a man, and you be that man, pile it on. The
proof-reading of 'The Prince and the Pauper' cost me the last rags
of my religion.

Clemens decided to have the Huckleberry Finn book illustrated after his
own ideas. He looked through the various comic papers to see if he could
find the work of some new man that appealed to his fancy. In the pages
of Life he discovered some comic pictures illustrating the possibility of
applying electrical burners to messenger boys, waiters, etc. The style
and the spirit of these things amused him. He instructed Webster to look
up the artist, who proved to be