en, on the
opening of the Millicent Library, a present to the town from Mrs. Rogers.
Mrs. Rogers had suggested to her husband that perhaps Mr. Clemens would
be willing to say a few words there. Mr. Rogers had replied, "Oh,
Clemens is in trouble. I don't like to ask him," but a day or two later
told him of Mrs. Rogers's wish, adding:

"Don't feel at all that you need to do it. I know just how you are
feeling, how worried you are."

Clemens answered, "Mr. Rogers, do you think there is anything I could do
for you that I wouldn't do?"

It was on this occasion that he told for the first time the "stolen
watermelon" story, so often reprinted since; how once he had stolen a
watermelon, and when he found it to be a green one, had returned it to
the farmer, with a lecture on honesty, and received a ripe one in its
place.

In spite of his cares and diversions Clemens's literary activities of
this time were considerable. He wrote an article for the Youth's
Companion--"How to Tell a Story"--and another for the North American
Review on Fenimore Cooper's "Literary Offenses." Mark Twain had not much
respect for Cooper as a literary artist. Cooper's stilted
artificialities and slipshod English exasperated him and made it hard for
him to see that in spite of these things the author of the Deerslayer was
a mighty story-teller. Clemens had also promised some stories to Walker,
of the Cosmopolitan, and gave him one for his Christmas number,
"Traveling with a Reformer," which had grown out of some incidents of
that long-ago journey with Osgood to Chicago, supplemented by others that
had happened on the more recent visit to that city with Hall. This story
had already appeared when Clemens and Rogers had made their Chicago trip.
Rogers had written for passes over the Pennsylvania road, and the
president, replying, said:

"No, I won't give Mark Twain a pass over our road. I've been reading his
'Traveling with a Reformer,' in which he abuses our road. I wouldn't let
him ride over it again if I could help it. The only way I'll agree to
let him go over it at all is in my private car. I have stocked it with
everything he can possibly want, and have given orders that if there is
anything else he wants the train is to be stopped until they can get it."

"Pudd'nhead Wilson" was appearing in the Century during this period, and
"Tom Sawyer Abroad" in the St. Nicholas. The Century had issued a tiny
calendar of the Pudd'nhead maxims, and these qua