that there is a way, if you could only
think it out, which would make the thing slide effortless from the
pen--the one right way, the sole form for you, the other forms being for
men whose line those forms are, or who are capabler than yourself: I've
had no end of experience in that (and maybe I am the only one--let us
hope so.) Last summer I started 16 things wrong--3 books and 13
mag. articles--and could only make 2 little wee things, 1500
words altogether, succeed:--only that out of piles and stacks of
diligently-wrought MS., the labor of 6 weeks' unremitting effort.
I could make all of those things go if I would take the trouble to
re-begin each one half a dozen times on a new plan. But none of them was
important enough except one: the story I (in the wrong form) mapped out
in Paris three or four years ago and told you about in New York under
seal of confidence--no other person knows of it but Mrs. Clemens--the
story to be called "Which was the Dream?"

A week ago I examined the MS--10,000 words--and saw that the plan was
a totally impossible one-for me; but a new plan suggested itself,
and straightway the tale began to slide from the pen with ease and
confidence. I think I've struck the right one this time. I have already
put 12,000 words of it on paper and Mrs. Clemens is pretty outspokenly
satisfied with it-a hard critic to content. I feel sure that all of the
first half of the story--and I hope three-fourths--will be comedy; but
by the former plan the whole of it (except the first 3 chapters) would
have been tragedy and unendurable, almost. I think I can carry the
reader a long way before he suspects that I am laying a tragedy-trap. In
the present form I could spin 16 books out of it with comfort and joy;
but I shall deny myself and restrict it to one. (If you should see
a little short story in a magazine in the autumn called "My Platonic
Sweetheart" written 3 weeks ago) that is not this one. It may have been
a suggester, though.

I expect all these singular privacies to interest you, and you are not
to let on that they don't.

We are leaving, this afternoon, for Ischl, to use that as a base for the
baggage, and then gad around ten days among the lakes and mountains to
rest-up Mrs. Clemens, who is jaded with housekeeping. I hope I can get a
chance to work a little in spots--I can't tell. But you do it--therefore
why should you think I can't?

[Remainder missing.]

The dre