nment managed by George Parsons Lathrop,
though Howells justly claims the glory of having fixed the price of
admission at five dollars. Then he recalls a pleasing anecdote of
Charles Eliot Norton, who introduced the attractions.

Norton presided, and when it came Clemens's turn to read he introduced
him with such exquisite praises as he best knew how to give, but before
he closed he fell a prey to one of those lapses of tact which are the
peculiar peril of people of the greatest tact. He was reminded of
Darwin's delight in Mark Twain, and how when he came from his long day's
exhausting study, and sank into bed at midnight, he took up a volume of
Mark Twain, whose books he always kept on a table beside him, and
whatever had been his tormenting problem, or excess of toil, he felt
secure of a good night's rest from it. A sort of blank ensued which
Clemens filled in the only possible way. He said he should always be
glad he had contributed to the repose of that great man, to whom science
owed so much, and then without waiting for the joy in every breast to
burst forth, he began to read.

Howells tells of Mark Twain's triumph on this occasion, and in a letter
at the time he wrote: "You simply straddled down to the footlights and
took that house up in the hollow of your hand and tickled it."

Howells adds that the show netted seventeen hundred dollars. This was
early in May.

Of literary work, beyond the war paper, the "Private History of a
Campaign that Failed" (published December, 1885), Clemens appears to have
done very little. His thoughts were far too busy with plans for
furthering the sale of the great military Memoir to follow literary
ventures of his own. At one time he was impelled to dictate an
autobiography--Grant's difficulties in his dying hour suggesting this
--and he arranged with Redpath, who was no longer a lecture agent and
understood stenography, to co-operate with him in the work. He dictated
a few chapters, but he was otherwise too much occupied to continue. Also,
he was unused to dictation, and found it hard and the result
unsatisfactory.

Two open communications from Mark Twain that year deserve to be
remembered. One of these; unsigned, was published in the Century
Magazine, and expressed the need for a "universal tinker," the man who
can accept a job in a large household or in a community as master of all
trades, with sufficient knowledge of each to be ready to undertake
whatever repairs are like