nearly disabled. The phonograph
for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark
Twain was always ready for any innovation.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Feb. 28, '91.

DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New
England Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary
conversation-voice and see if another person (who didn't hear you do it)
can take the words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them
to you. If the experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a
message which you don't hear, and see if afterward you can get it out
without difficulty) won't you then ask them on what terms they will rent
me a phonograph for 3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry
75,000 words. 175 cylinders, ain't it?

I don't want to erase any of them. My right arm is nearly disabled by
rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies
of it--no, I mean a million--next fall) I feel sure I can dictate the
book into a phonograph if I don't have to yell. I write 2,000 words a
day; I think I can dictate twice as many.

But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you--go ahead and
do it, all the same.

Ys ever
MARK.

Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a
few days later reported results. He wrote: "I talked your letter
into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech. Then
the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell.
Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she
put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out. I send you the
result. There is a mistake of one word. I think that if you have
the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is
perfectly easy. It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I
did."

Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least
not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily. His
early experience with it, however, seems interesting.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91.

DEAR HOWELLS,--I'm ashamed. It happened in this way. I was proposing to
acknowledge the receipt of the play