etting
everything shipshape and cleared up, I went to work next day upon an
Atlantic article, which ought to be worth $20 per page (which is the
price they usually pay for my work, I believe) for although it is only
70 pages MS (less than two days work, counting by bulk,) I have spent 3
more days trimming, altering and working at it. I shall put in one more
day's polishing on it, and then read it before our Club, which is to
meet at our house Monday evening, the 24th inst. I think it will bring
out considerable discussion among the gentlemen of the Club--though
the title of the article will not give them much notion of what is to
follow,--this title being "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of
Crime in Connecticut"--which reminds me that today's Tribune says there
will be a startling article in the current Atlantic, in which a being
which is tangible bud invisible will figure-exactly the case with
the sketch of mine which I am talking about! However, mine can lie
unpublished a year or two as well as not--though I wish that contributor
of yours had not interfered with his coincidence of heroes.

But what I am coming at, is this: won't you and Mrs. Howells come down
Saturday the 22nd and remain to the Club on Monday night? We always have
a rattling good time at the Club and we do want you to come, ever so
much. Will you? Now say you will. Mrs. Clemens and I are persuading
ourselves that you twain will come.

My volume of sketches is doing very well, considering the times;
received my quarterly statement today from Bliss, by which I perceive
that 20,000 copies have been sold--or rather, 20,000 had been sold 3
weeks ago; a lot more, by this time, no doubt.

I am on the sick list again--and was, day before yesterday--but on the
whole I am getting along.

Yrs ever
MARK

Howells wrote that he could not come down to the club meeting,
adding that sickness was "quite out of character" for Mark Twain,
and hardly fair on a man who had made so many other people feel
well. He closed by urging that Bliss "hurry out" 'Tom Sawyer.'
"That boy is going to make a prodigious hit." Clemens answered:

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston.

HARTFORD, Jan. 18, '76.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks, and ever so many, for the good opinion of 'Tom
Sawyer.' Williams has made about 300 rattling