am mighty glad you are done your book (this is from a man who, above
all others, feels how much that sentence means) and am also mighty glad
you have begun the next (this is also from a man who knows the felicity
of that, and means straightway to enjoy it.) The Undiscovered starts off
delightfully--I have read it aloud to Mrs. C. and we vastly enjoyed it.

Well, time's about up--must drop a line to Aldrich.

Yrs ever,
MARK.

In a letter which Mark Twain wrote to his brother Orion at this
period we get the first hint of a venture which was to play an
increasingly important part in the Hartford home and fortunes during
the next ten or a dozen years. This was the type-setting machine
investment, which, in the end, all but wrecked Mark Twain's
finances. There is but a brief mention of it in the letter to
Orion, and the letter itself is not worth preserving, but as
references to the "machine" appear with increasing frequency, it
seems proper to record here its first mention. In the same letter
he suggests to his brother that he undertake an absolutely truthful
autobiography, a confession in which nothing is to be withheld. He
cites the value of Casanova's memories, and the confessions of
Rousseau. Of course, any literary suggestion from "Brother Sam" was
gospel to Orion, who began at once piling up manuscript at a great
rate.

Meantime, Mark Twain himself, having got 'A Tramp Abroad' on the
presses, was at work with enthusiasm on a story begun nearly three
years before at Quarry Farm-a story for children-its name, as he
called it then, "The Little Prince and The Little Pauper." He was
presently writing to Howells his delight in the new work.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Mch. 11, '80.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--... I take so much pleasure in my story that I am loth
to hurry, not wanting to get it done. Did I ever tell you the plot
of it? It begins at 9 a.m., Jan. 27, 1547, seventeen and a half hours
before Henry VIII's death, by the swapping of clothes and place, between
the prince of Wales and a pauper boy of the same age and countenance
(and half as much learning and still more genius and imagination) and
after that, the rightful small King has a rough tim