yself: "I did not overdraw him by a shade, I set him down as he was;
and he is the same man to-day. Cable will recognize him."

Clemens opened the door into Cable's room and allowed the golden
dream-talk to float in. It was of a "small venture" which the caller had
undertaken through his son.

"Only a little thing--a mere trifle--a bagatelle. I suppose there's a
couple of millions in it, possibly three, but not more, I think; still,
for a boy, you know----"

It was the same old Cousin Jim. Later, when he had royally accepted some
tickets for the reading and bowed his exit, Cable put his head in at the
door.

"That was Colonel Sellers," he said.

CLIII. HUCK FINN COMES INTO HIS OWN

In the December Century (1884) appeared a chapter from 'The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn', "The Grangerford-Shepherdson Feud," a piece of
writing which Edmund Clarence Stederian, Brander Matthews, and others
promptly ranked as among Mark Twain's very best; when this was followed,
in the January number, by "King Sollermun," a chapter which in its
way delighted quite as many readers, the success of the new book was
accounted certain.--[Stedman, writing to Clemens of this instalment,
said: "To my mind it is not only the most finished and condensed thing
you have done but as dramatic and powerful an episode as I know in
modern literature."]

'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' was officially published in England
and America in December, 1884, but the book was not in the canvassers'
hands for delivery until February. By this time the orders were
approximately for forty thousand copies, a number which had increased
to fifty thousand a few weeks later. Webster's first publication venture
was in the nature of a triumph. Clemens wrote to him March 16th:

"Your news is splendid. Huck certainly is a success."

He felt that he had demonstrated his capacity as a general director and
Webster had proved his efficiency as an executive. He had no further
need of an outside publisher.

The story of Huck Finn will probably stand as the best of Mark Twain's
purely fictional writings. A sequel to Tom Sawyer, it is greater
than its predecessor; greater artistically, though perhaps with less
immediate interest for the juvenile reader. In fact, the books are so
different that they are not to be compared--wherein lies the success
of the later one. Sequels are dangerous things when the story is
continuous, but in Huckleberry Finn the story is a ne