s, he will have his hands
something more than full--but let him struggle, let him struggle.

Is there some way, honest or otherwise, by which you can get a copy
of Mayo's play, "Pudd'nhead Wilson," for me? There is a capable
young Austrian here who saw it in New York and wants to translate it
and see if he can stage it here. I don't think these people here
would understand it or take to it, but he thinks it will pay us to
try.

A couple of London dramatists want to bargain with me for the right
to make a high comedy out of the "Million-Pound Note." Barkis is
willing.

This is but one of the briefer letters. Most of them were much longer
and of more elaborate requirements. Also they overflowed with the gaiety
of good-fortune and with gratitude. From Vienna in 1899 Clemens wrote:

Why, it is just splendid! I have nothing to do but sit around and
watch you set the hen and hatch out those big broods and make my
living for me. Don't you wish you had somebody to do the same for
you?--a magician who can turn steel add copper and Brooklyn gas into
gold. I mean to raise your wages again--I begin to feel that I can
afford it.

I think the hen ought to have a name; she must be called Unberufen.
That is a German word which is equivalent to it "sh! hush' don't let
the spirits hear you!" The superstition is that if you happen to
let fall any grateful jubilation over good luck that you've had or
are hoping to have you must shut square off and say "Unberufen!" and
knock wood. The word drives the evil spirits away; otherwise they
would divine your joy or your hopes and go to work and spoil your
game. Set her again--do!

Oh, look here! You are just like everybody; merely because I am
literary you think I'm a commercial somnambulist, and am not
watching you with all that money in your hands. Bless you, I've got
a description of you and a photograph in every police-office in
Christendom, with the remark appended: "Look out for a handsome,
tall, slender young man with a gray mustache and courtly manners and
an address well calculated to deceive, calling himself by the name
of Smith." Don't you try to get away--it won't work.

From the note-book:

Midnight. At Miss Bailie's home for English governesses. Two
comedies & some songs and ballads. Was asked to speak & did it.
(And rung in the "Mexica