your proposal to read the proofs of Huck
Finn.

Now, if you mean it, old man--if you are in earnest-proceed, in
God's name, and be by me forever blessed. I can't conceive of a
rational man deliberately piling such an atrocious job upon himself.
But if there be such a man, and you be that man, pile it on. The
proof-reading of 'The Prince and the Pauper' cost me the last rags
of my religion.

Clemens decided to have the Huckleberry Finn book illustrated after his
own ideas. He looked through the various comic papers to see if he could
find the work of some new man that appealed to his fancy. In the pages
of Life he discovered some comic pictures illustrating the possibility
of applying electrical burners to messenger boys, waiters, etc. The
style and the spirit of these things amused him. He instructed Webster
to look up the artist, who proved to be a young man, E. W. Kemble by
name, later one of our foremost cartoonists. Webster engaged Kemble
and put the manuscript in his hands. Through the publication of certain
chapters of Huck Finn in the Century Magazine, Kemble was brought to
the notice of its editors, who wrote Clemens that they were profoundly
indebted to him for unearthing "such a gem of an illustrator."

Clemens, encouraged and full of enthusiasm, now endeavored to interest
himself in the practical details of manufacture, but his stock of
patience was light and the details were many. His early business period
resembles, in some of its features, his mining experience in Esmeralda,
his letters to Webster being not unlike those to Orion in that former
day. They are much oftener gentle, considerate, even apologetic, but
they are occasionally terse, arbitrary, and profane. It required effort
for him to be entirely calm in his business correspondence. A criticism
of one of Webster's assistants will serve as an example of his less
quiet method:

Charley, your proof-reader, is an idiot; and not only an idiot, but
blind; and not only blind, but partly dead.

Of course, one must regard many of Mark Twain's business aspects
humorously. To consider them otherwise is to place him in a false light
altogether. He wore himself out with his anxieties and irritations; but
that even he, in the midst of his furies, saw the humor of it all is
sufficiently evidenced by the form of his savage phrasing. There were
few things that did not amuse him, and certainly nothing amused more, or
oftener