, than himself.

It is proper to add a detail in evidence of a business soundness which
he sometimes manifested. He had observed the methods of Bliss and
Osgood, and had drawn his conclusions. In the beginning of the Huck Finn
canvass he wrote Webster:

Keep it diligently in mind that we don't issue till we have made a
big sale.

Get at your canvassing early and drive it with all your might, with
an intent and purpose of issuing on the 10th or 15th of next
December (the best time in the year to tumble a big pile into the
trade); but if we haven't 40,000 subscriptions we simply postpone
publication till we've got them. It is a plain, simple policy, and
would have saved both of my last books if it had been followed.
[That is to say, 'The Prince and the Pauper' and the Mississippi
book, neither of which had sold up to his expectations on the
initial canvass.]

CL. FARM PICTURES

Gerhardt returned from Paris that summer, after three years of study,
a qualified sculptor. He was prepared to take commissions, and came to
Elmira to model a bust of his benefactor. The work was finished
after four or five weeks of hard effort and pronounced admirable; but
Gerhardt, attempting to make a cast one morning, ruined it completely.
The family gathered round the disaster, which to them seemed final, but
the sculptor went immediately to work, and in an amazingly brief time
executed a new bust even better than the first, an excellent piece of
modeling and a fine likeness. It was decided that a cut of it should be
used as a frontispiece for the new book, The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn.

Clemens was at this time giving the final readings to the Huck Finn
pages, a labor in which Mrs. Clemens and the children materially
assisted. In the childish biography which Susy began of her father, a
year later, she says:

Ever since papa and mama were married papa has written his books and
then taken them to mama in manuscript, and she has expurgated
--[Susy's spelling is preserved]--them. Papa read Huckleberry Finn to
us in manuscript,--[Probably meaning proof.]--just before it came
out, and then he would leave parts of it with mama to expurgate,
while he went off to the study to work, and sometimes Clara and I
would be sitting with mama while she was looking the manuscript
over, and I remember so well, with what pangs of regret we used to
see her turn do