e Mark Twain set down his literary
declaration of this period.

"I like history, biography, travels, curious facts and strange
happenings, and science. And I detest novels, poetry, and theology."

But of course the novels of Howells would be excepted; Lecky was not
theology, but the history of it; his taste for poetry would develop
later, though it would never become a fixed quantity, as was his
devotion to history and science. His interest in these amounted to a
passion.

XCV. AN "ATLANTIC" STORY AND A PLAY

The reference to "Auntie Cord" in the letter to Dr. Brown brings us to
Mark Twain's first contribution to the Atlantic Monthly. Howells in his
Recollections of his Atlantic editorship, after referring to certain
Western contributors, says:

Later came Mark Twain, originally of Missouri, but then
provisionally of Hartford, and now ultimately of the solar system,
not to say the universe. He came first with "A True Story," one of
those noble pieces of humanity with which the South has atoned
chiefly, if not solely, through him for all its despite to the
negro.

Clemens had long aspired to appear in the Atlantic, but such was his own
rating of his literature that he hardly hoped to qualify for its pages.
Twichell remembers his "mingled astonishment and triumph" when he was
invited to send something to the magazine.

He was obliged to "send something" once or twice before the acceptance
of "A True Story," the narrative of Auntie Cord, and even this
acceptance brought with it the return of a fable which had accompanied
it, with the explanation that a fable like that would disqualify the
magazine for every denominational reader, though Howells hastened to
express his own joy in it, having been particularly touched by the
author's reference to Sisyphus and Atlas as ancestors of the tumble-bug.
The "True Story," he said, with its "realest king of black talk," won
him, and a few days later he wrote again: "This little story delights me
more and more. I wish you had about forty of 'em."

And so, modestly enough, as became him, for the story was of the
simplest, most unpretentious sort, Mark Twain entered into the school of
the elect.

In his letter to Howells, accompanying the MS., the author said:

I inclose also "A True Story," which has no humor in it. You can
pay as lightly as you choose for that if you want it, for it is
rather out of my line. I have not altered the