earning. It was said that he
had in preparation a work showing the unity of all languages. Goodman
and Clemens agreed that Ruloff's death would be a great loss to mankind,
even though he was clearly a villain and deserved his sentence. They
decided that justice would be served just as well if some stupid person
were hung in his place, and following out this fancy Clemens one morning
put aside his regular work and wrote an article to the Tribune,
offering to supply a substitute for Ruloff. He signed it simply "Samuel
Langhorne," and it was published as a serious communication, without
comment, so far as the Tribune was concerned. Other papers, however,
took it up and it was widely copied and commented upon. Apparently
no one ever identified, Mark Twain with the authorship of the letter,
which, by the way, does not appear to have prolonged Ruloff's earthly
usefulness.--[The reader will find the Ruloff letter in full under
Appendix K, at the end of last volume.]

Life at the farm may have furnished agricultural inspiration, for
Clemens wrote something about Horace Greeley's farming, also a skit
concerning Henry Ward Beecher's efforts in that direction. Of Mr.
Beecher's farming he said:

"His strawberries would be a comfortable success if robins would eat
turnips."

The article amused Beecher, and perhaps Greeley was amused too, for he
wrote:

MARK,--You are mistaken as to my criticisms on your farming. I
never publicly made any, while you have undertaken to tell the exact
cost per pint of my potatoes and cabbages, truly enough the
inspiration of genius. If you will really betake yourself to
farming, or even to telling what you know about it, rather than what
you don't know about mine, I will not only refrain from disparaging
criticism, but will give you my blessing.

Yours, HORACE GREELEY.

The letter is in Mr. Greeley's characteristic scrawl, and no doubt
furnished inspiration for the turnip story in 'Roughing It', also the
model for the pretended facsimile of Greeley's writing.

Altogether that was a busy, enterprising summer at Quarry Farm. By
the middle of May, Clemens wrote to Bliss that he had twelve hundred
manuscript pages of the new book already written, and that he was
turning out the remainder at the rate of from thirty to sixty-five
per day. He was in high spirits by this time. The family health had
improved, and prospects were bright.

I have enough