intention that it should read plausibly, and it is now plain that it
does; it was my intention that it should be emotional and touching,
and you see yourself that it fetched this public instructor. Alas!
if I had but left that one treacherous word out I should have
scored, scored everywhere, and the paragraph would have slidden
through every reader's sensibilities like oil and left not a
suspicion behind.

The other sample inquiry is from a professor in a New England
university. It contains one naughty word (which I cannot bear to
suppress), but he is not in the theological department, so it is no
harm:

"DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--'Far in the empty sky a solitary oesophagus
slept upon motionless wing.'

"It is not often I get a chance to read much periodical literature,
but I have just gone through at this belated period, with much
gratification and edification, your 'Double-Barrelled Detective
Story.'

"But what in hell is an oesophagus? I keep one myself, but it never
sleeps in the air or anywhere else. My profession is to deal with
words, and oesophagus interested me the moment I lighted upon it.
But, as a companion of my youth used to say, 'I'll be eternally,
co-eternally cussed' if I can make it out. Is it a joke or am I an
ignoramus?"

Between you and me, I was almost ashamed of having fooled that man,
but for pride's sake I was not going to say so. I wrote and told
him it was a joke--and that is what I am now saying to my
Springfield inquirer. And I told him to carefully read the whole
paragraph and he would find not a vestige of sense in any detail of
it. This also I recommend to my Springfield inquirer.

I have confessed. I am sorry--partially. I will not do so any
more--for the present. Don't ask me any more questions; let the
oesophagus have a rest--on his same old motionless wing.

He wrote Twichell that the story had been a six-day 'tour de force',
twenty-five thousand words, and he adds:

How long it takes a literary seed to sprout sometimes! This seed was
planted in your house many years ago when you sent me to bed with a
book not heard of by me until then--Sherlock Holmes . . . .
I've done a grist of writing here this summer, but not for
publication soon, if ever. I did write two satisfactory articles
for early print, but I've burned one of them & hav