iolently. Your cue will probably break a chandelier, but no
matter; you have done what you could to help the count.

AT THE DOG-FIGHT

If it occur in your block, courteously give way to strangers
desiring a view, particularly ladies.

Avoid showing partiality toward the one dog, lest you hurt the
feelings of the other one.

Let your secret sympathies and your compassion be always with the
under dog in the fight--this is magnanimity; but bet on the other
one--this is business.

AT POKER

If you draw to a flush and fail to fill, do not continue the
conflict.

If you hold a pair of trays, and your opponent is blind, and it
costs you fifty to see him, let him remain unperceived.

If you hold nothing but ace high, and by some means you know that
the other man holds the rest of the aces, and he calls, excuse
yourself; let him call again another time.

WALL STREET

If you live in the country, buy at 80, sell at 40. Avoid all forms
of eccentricity.

IN THE RESTAURANT

When you wish to get the waiter's attention, do not sing out "Say!"
Simply say "Szt!"

His old abandoned notion of "Hamlet" with an added burlesque character
came back to him and stirred his enthusiasm anew, until even Howells
manifested deep interest in the matter. One reflects how young Howells
must have been in those days; how full of the joy of existence; also how
mournfully he would consider such a sacrilege now.

Clemens proposed almost as many things to Howells as his brother Orion
proposed to him. There was scarcely a letter that didn't contain some
new idea, with a request for advice or co-operation. Now it was some
book that he meant to write some day, and again it would be a something
that he wanted Howells to write.

Once he urged Howells to make a play, or at least a novel, out of Orion.
At another time he suggested as material the "Rightful Earl of Durham."

He is a perfectly stunning literary bonanza, and must be dug up and put
on the market. You must get his entire biography out of him and have it
ready for Osgood's magazine. Even if it isn't worth printing, you must
have it anyway, and use it one of these days in one of your stories or
in a play.

It was this notion about 'The American Claimant' which somewhat later
would lead to a collaboration with Howells on a drama