had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger
game--the masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them,
but have done my best to entertain them. To simply amuse them would
have satisfied my dearest ambition at any time; for they could get
instruction elsewhere, and I had two chances to help to the teacher's
one: for amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of
fatigue after it. My audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and
so I cannot know whether I have won its approbation or only got its
censure.

Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members,
but have been served like the others--criticized from the
culture-standard--to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never
cared what became of the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre
and the opera--they had no use for me and the melodeon.

And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making
supplication to this effect: that the critics adopt a rule recognizing
the Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done
for them shall be judged. Help me, Mr. Lang; no voice can reach further
than yours in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority.

Lang's reply was an article in the Illustrated London News on "The
Art of Mark Twain." Lang had no admiration to express for the
Yankee, which he confessed he had not cared to read, but he
glorified Huck Finn to the highest. "I can never forget, nor be
ungrateful for the exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry
Finn for the first time, years ago," he wrote; "I read it again last
night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck. I never laid it down till I
had finished it."

Lang closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the
"great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who
watched to see this new planet swim into their ken."

XXX. LETTERS, 1890, CHIEFLY TO JOS. T. GOODMAN. THE GREAT MACHINE
ENTERPRISE

Dr. John Brown's son, whom Mark Twain and his wife had known in 1873
as "Jock," sent copies of Dr. John Brown and His Sister Isabella, by
E. T. McLaren. It was a gift appreciated in the Clemens home.

*****

To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh, Scotland:

HARTFORD, Feby 11, 1890.

DEAR MR. BROWN,--Both copies came, and we are reading and re-reading
th