ination which he thought night be not only profitable but pleasant.
Thomas Nast had made a great success of his caricature lectures, and
Clemens, recalling Nast's long-ago proposal, found it newly attractive.
He wrote characteristically:

MY DEAR NAST,--I did not think I should ever stand on a platform
again until the time was come for me to say, "I die innocent." But
the same old offers keep arriving. I have declined them all, just
as usual, though sorely tempted, as usual.

Now, I do not decline because I mind talking to an audience, but
because (1) traveling alone is so heartbreakingly dreary, and (2)
shouldering the whole show is such a cheer-killing responsibility.

Therefore, I now propose to you what you proposed to me in 1867, ten
years ago (when I was unknown)--viz., that you stand on the platform
and make pictures, and I stand by you and blackguard the audience.
I should enormously enjoy meandering around (to big towns--don't
want to go to the little ones), with you for company.

My idea is not to fatten the lecture agents and lyceums on the
spoils, but to put all the ducats religiously into two equal piles,
and say to the artist and lecturer, "absorb these."

For instance, [here follows a plan and a possible list of the cities
to be visited]. The letter continues:

Call the gross receipts $100,00 for four months and a half, and the
profit from $60,000 to $75,000 (I try to make the figures large
enough, and leave it to the public to reduce them).

I did not put in Philadelphia because Pugh owns that town, and last
winter, when I made a little reading-trip, he only paid me $300, and
pretended his concert (I read fifteen minutes in the midst of a
concert) cost him a vast sum, and so he couldn't afford any more.
I could get up a better concert with a barrel of cats.

I have imagined two or three pictures and concocted the accompanying
remarks, to see how the thing would go. I was charmed.

Well, you think it over, Nast, and drop me a line. We should have
some fun.

Undoubtedly this would have been a profitable combination, but Nast had a
distaste for platforming--had given it up, as he thought, for life. So
Clemens settled down to the fireside days, that afforded him always the
larger comfort. The children were at an age "to be entertaining, and to
be entertained." In either case they furn