ghty rough,
coarse, unpromising subject when Livy took charge of me, four years ago,
and I may still be to the rest of the world, but not to her. She has
made a very creditable job of me.

Truly fortune not only smiled, but laughed. Every mail brought
great bundles of letters that sang his praises. Robert Watt, who had
translated his books into Danish, wrote of their wide popularity
among his people. Madame Blanc (Th. Bentzon), who as early as 1872 had
translated The Jumping Frog into French, and published it, with extended
comment on the author and his work, in the 'Revue des deux mondes', was
said to be preparing a review of 'The Gilded Age'. All the world seemed
ready to do him honor.

Of course, one must always pay the price, usually a vexatious one.
Bores stopped him on the street to repeat ancient and witless stories.
Invented anecdotes, some of them exasperating ones, went the rounds of
the press. Impostors in distant localities personated him, or claimed
to be near relatives, and obtained favors, sometimes money, in his name.
Trivial letters, seeking benefactions of every kind, took the savor from
his daily mail. Letters from literary aspirants were so numerous that he
prepared a "form" letter of reply:

DEAR SIR OR MADAM,--Experience has not taught me very much, still it has
taught me that it is not wise to criticize a piece of literature, except
to an enemy of the person who wrote it; then if you praise it that
enemy admires--you for your honest manliness, and if you dispraise it he
admires you for your sound judgment.

Yours truly, S. L. C.

Even Orion, now in Keokuk on a chicken farm, pursued him with
manuscripts and proposals of schemes. Clemens had bought this farm for
Orion, who had counted on large and quick returns, but was planning new
enterprises before the first eggs were hatched. Orion Clemens was as
delightful a character as was ever created in fiction, but he must have
been a trial now and then to Mark Twain. We may gather something of this
from a letter written by the latter to his mother and sister at this
period:

I can't "encourage" Orion. Nobody can do that conscientiously, for
the reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off
on some new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a
man who the older he grows the worse he writes?

I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would change
his religion s