enthusiastic ally was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. We never thought
it would get into the papers. I never played a practical joke
before. I never will again, certainly.

Mark Twain in those days did not encourage the regular
autograph-collectors, and seldom paid any attention to their requests
for his signature. He changed all this in later years, and kept a supply
always on hand to satisfy every request; but in those earlier days he
had no patience with collecting fads, and it required a particularly
pleasing application to obtain his signature.

CXLIX. MARK TWAIN IN BUSINESS

Samuel Clemens by this time was definitely engaged in the publishing
business. Webster had a complete office with assistants at 658
Broadway, and had acquired a pretty thorough and practical knowledge
of subscription publishing. He was a busy, industrious young man,
tirelessly energetic, 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