very little, though he seems to have planned Tom Sawyer, and perhaps
made its earliest beginning, which was in dramatic form.

His mind, however, was otherwise active. He was always more or less
given to inventions, and in his next letter we find a description of
one which he brought to comparative perfection.

He had also conceived the idea of another book of travel, and this
was his purpose of a projected trip to England.

*****

To Orion Clemens, in Hartford:

FENWICK HALL, SAYBROOK, CONN.

Aug. 11, 1872.

MY DEAR BRO.--I shall sail for England in the Scotia, Aug. 21.

But what I wish to put on record now, is my new invention--hence
this note, which you will preserve. It is this--a self-pasting
scrap-book--good enough idea if some juggling tailor does not come
along and ante-date me a couple of months, as in the case of the elastic
veststrap.

The nuisance of keeping a scrap-book is: 1. One never has paste or gum
tragacanth handy; 2. Mucilage won't stick, or stay, 4 weeks; 3. Mucilage
sucks out the ink and makes the scraps unreadable; 4. To daub and paste
3 or 4 pages of scraps is tedious, slow, nasty and tiresome. My idea is
this: Make a scrap-book with leaves veneered or coated with gum-stickum
of some kind; wet the page with sponge, brush, rag or tongue, and dab on
your scraps like postage stamps.

Lay on the gum in columns of stripes.

Each stripe of gum the length of say 20 ems, small pica, and as broad
as your finger; a blank about as broad as your finger between each 2
stripes--so in wetting the paper you need not wet any more of the gum
than your scrap or scraps will cover--then you may shut up the book and
the leaves won't stick together.

Preserve, also, the envelope of this letter--postmark ought to be good
evidence of the date of this great humanizing and civilizing invention.

I'll put it into Dan Slote's hands and tell him he must send you all
over America, to urge its use upon stationers and booksellers--so
don't buy into a newspaper. The name of this thing is "Mark Twain's
Self-Pasting Scrapbook."

All well here. Shall be up a P. M. Tuesday. Send the carriage.

Yr Bro.
S. L. CLEMENS.

The Dan Slote of this letter is, of course, his old Quaker City
shipmate, who was enga