gagement, but the circumstances washed it out of
my mind. If I had only laid the matter before the major half of the
administration on the spot, there would have been no blunder; but
I never thought of that. So when I did lay it before her, later, I
realized once more that it will not do for the literary fraction of a
combination to try to manage affairs which properly belong in the office
of the business bulk of it. I suppose the President often acts just like
that: goes and makes an impossible promise, and you never find it out
until it is next to impossible to break it up and set things
straight again. Well, that is just our way, exactly-one half of the
administration always busy getting the family into trouble, and the
other half busy getting it out again. And so we do seem to be all pretty
much alike, after all. The fact is, I had forgotten that we were to have
a dinner party on that Bridgeport date--I thought it was the next day:
which is a good deal of an improvement for me, because I am more used
to being behind a day or two than ahead. But that is just the difference
between one end of this kind of an administration and the other end of
it, as you have noticed, yourself--the other end does not forget these
things. Just so with a funeral; if it is the man's funeral, he is most
always there, of course--but that is no credit to him, he wouldn't be
there if you depended on him to remember about it; whereas, if on the
other hand--but I seem to have got off from my line of argument somehow;
never mind about the funeral. Of course I am not meaning to say
anything against funerals--that is, as occasions--mere occasions--for as
diversions I don't think they amount to much But as I was saying--if you
are not busy I will look back and see what it was I was saying.

I don't seem to find the place; but anyway she was as sorry as ever
anybody could be that I could not go to Bridgeport, but there was
no help for it. And I, I have been not only sorry but very sincerely
ashamed of having made an engagement to go without first making sure
that I could keep it, and I do not know how to apologize enough for my
heedless breach of good manners.

With the sincerest respect,
S. L. CLEMENS.

Samuel Clemens was one of the very few authors to copyright a book
in England before the enactment of the international copyright law.
As early as 1872 he copyrighted 'R