"

I thought I could, but it did not seem to me that it would be modest to
speak out, in the circumstances. So I diffidently said nothing.
Stevenson noticed, and said--

"Save your delicacy for another time--you are not the one. For a
shilling you can't name the American author of widest note and
popularity in the States. But I can."

Then he went on and told about that Albany incident. He had inquired of
the shopman--

"Who is this Davis?"

The answer was--

"An author whose books have to have freight-trains to carry them, not
baskets. Apparently you have not heard of him?"

Stevenson said no, this was the first time. The man said--

"Nobody has heard of Davis: you may ask all around and you will see. You
never see his name mentioned in print, not even in advertisement; these
things are of no use to Davis, not any more than they are to the wind
and the sea. You never see one of Davis's books floating on top of the
United States, but put on your diving armor and get yourself lowered
away down and down and down till you strike the dense region, the
sunless region of eternal drudgery and starvation wages--there you'll
find them by the million. The man that gets that market, his fortune is
made, his bread and butter are safe, for those people will never go back
on him. An author may have a reputation which is confined to the
surface, and lose it and become pitied, then despised, then forgotten,
entirely forgotten--the frequent steps in a surface reputation. At
surface reputation, however great, is always mortal, and always killable
if you go at it right--with pins and needles, and quiet slow poison, not
with the club and tomahawk. But it is a different matter with the
submerged reputation--down in the deep water; once a favorite there,
always a favorite; once beloved, always beloved; once respected, always
respected, honored, and believed in. For, what the reviewer says never
finds its way down into those placid deeps; nor the newspaper sneers,
nor any breath of the winds of slander blowing above. Down there they
never hear of these things. Their idol may be painted clay, up then at
the surface, and fade and waste and crumble and blow away, there being
much weather there; but down below he is gold and adamant and
indestructible."

V.

This is from this morning's paper:

MARK TWAIN LETTER SOLD.

_Written to Thomas Nast, it Proposed a Joint Tour._

A Mark Twain a