ok at all. It will only be read by adults. It
is only written for adults.

He would like to see the story in the Atlantic, he said, but doubted the
wisdom of serialization.

"By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him through life (in the
first person), but not Tam Sawyer, he would not make a good character
for it." From which we get the first glimpse of Huck's later adventures.

Of course he wanted Howells to look at the story. It was a tremendous
favor to ask, he said, and added, "But I know of no other person whose
judgment I could venture to take, fully and entirely. Don't hesitate to
say no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I would have honest need
to blush if you said yes."

"Send on your MS.," wrote Howells. "You've no idea what I may ask you to
do for me some day."

But Clemens, conscience-stricken, "blushed and weakened," as he said.
When Howells insisted, he wrote:

But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows:
dramatize it, if you perceive that you can, and take, for your
remuneration, half of the first $6,000 which I receive for its
representation on the stage. You could alter the plot entirely if
you chose. I could help in the work most cheerfully after you had
arranged the plot. I have my eye upon two young girls who can play
Tom and Huck.

Howells in his reply urged. Clemens to do the playwriting himself. He
could never find time, he said, and he doubted whether he could
enter into the spirit of another man's story. Clemens did begin a
dramatization then or a little later, but it was not completed. Mrs.
Clemens, to whom he had read the story as it proceeded, was as anxious
as her husband for Howells's opinion, for it was the first extended
piece of fiction Mark Twain had undertaken alone. He carried the
manuscript over to Boston himself, and whatever their doubts may have
been, Howells's subsequent letter set them at rest. He wrote that he had
sat up till one in the morning to get to the end of it, simply because
it was impossible to leave off.

It is altogether the best boy story I ever read. It will be an immense
success, but I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's story;
grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do, and if you should put it
forth as a story of boys' character from the grown-up point of view you
give the wrong key to it.

Viewed in the light of later events, there has never been any better
literary opi