never such consuming interest and delight. (But Lord bless you the
second reading will fetch it!) And just think!--I had Sol Smith Russell
in my mind's eye for the old detective's part, and hang it he has gone
off pottering with Oliver Optic, or else the papers lie.

I read everything about the President's doings there with exultation.

I wish that old ass of a private secretary hadn't taken me for George
Francis Train. If ignorance were a means of grace I wouldn't trade that
gorilla's chances for the Archbishop of Canterbury's.

I shall call on the President again, by and by. I shall go in my war
paint; and if I am obstructed the nation will have the unusual spectacle
of a private secretary with a pen over one ear a tomahawk over the
other.

I read the entire Atlantic this time. Wonderful number. Mrs. Rose Terry
Cooke's story was a ten-strike. I wish she would write 12 old-time New
England tales a year.

Good times to you all! Mind if you don't run here for a few days you
will go to hence without having had a fore-glimpse of heaven.

MARK.

The play, "Ah Sin," that had done little enough in Washington, was
that summer given another trial by Augustin Daly, at the Fifth
Avenue Theater, New York, with a fine company. Clemens had
undertaken to doctor the play, and it would seem to have had an
enthusiastic reception on the opening night. But it was a summer
audience, unspoiled by many attractions. "Ah Sin" was never a
success in the New York season--never a money-maker on the road.

The reference in the first paragraph of the letter that follows is
to the Bermuda chapters which Mark Twain was publishing
simultaneously in England and America.

ELMIRA, Aug 3,1877.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have mailed one set of the slips to London, and told
Bentley you would print Sept. 15, in October Atlantic, and he must not
print earlier in Temple Bar. Have I got the dates and things right?

I am powerful glad to see that No. 1 reads a nation sight better in
print than it did in MS. I told Bentley we'd send him the slips, each
time, 6 weeks before day of publication. We can do that can't we? Two
months ahead would be still better I suppose, but I don't know.

"Ah Sin" went a-booming at the Fifth Avenue. The reception of Col.
Sellers was calm compared to it.

The criticisms were just; t