God-damned parishioners--and you did it again last night--"
D.W.]

Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were
written. Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest,
sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary
relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and
wrote something more temperate, or nothing at all. A few such
letters here follow.

Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who
wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays,
tobacco, and what not. They were generally persistent people,
unable to accept a polite or kindly denial. Once he set down some
remarks on this particular phase of correspondence. He wrote:


I

No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest in many and many an
electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal. And no
doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of activity
whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this sort of
solicitation. Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure
silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.

And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to get
the loan of somebody else's.

As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case. He sees