en written & the globe circumnavigated merely to get that episode
in in an effective (& at the same time apparently unintentional)
way. I have written 12,000 words of this new narrative, & find that
the humor flows as easily as the adventures & surprises--so I shall
go along and make a book of from 50,000 to 100,000 words.

It is a story for boys, of course, & I think it will interest any
boy between 8 years & 80.

When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St.
Nicholas, wrote and offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for
boys 50,000 words long. I wrote back and declined, for I had other
matter in my mind then.

I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write
so that it will not only interest boys, but will also strongly
interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges
the audience.

Now, this story doesn't need to be restricted to a child's magazine
--it is proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a
syndicate. I don't swear it, but I think so.

Proposed title--New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

He was full of his usual enthusiasm in any new undertaking, and writes
of the Extraordinary Twins:

By and by I shall have to offer (for grown folks' magazine) a novel
entitled, 'Those Extraordinary Twins'. It's the howling farce I
told you I had begun awhile back. I laid it aside to ferment while
I wrote Tom Sawyer Abroad, but I took it up again on a little
different plan lately, and it is swimming along satisfactorily now.
I think all sorts of folks will read it. It is clear out of the
common order--it is a fresh idea--I don't think it resembles
anything in literature.

He was quite right; it did not resemble anything in literature, nor did
it greatly resemble literature, though something at least related to
literature would eventually grow out of it.

In a letter written many years afterward by Frank Mason, then
consul-general at Frankfort, he refers to "that happy summer at
Nauheim." Mason was often a visitor there, and we may believe that his
memory of the summer was justified. For one thing, Clemens himself was
in better health and spirits and able to continue his work. But an
even greater happiness lay in the fact that two eminent physicians had
pronounced Mrs. Clemens free from any organic ills. To Orion, Clemens
wrote:

We are