To an English admirer:

INNOCENCE AT HOME, REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
Aug. 15, '08.
DEAR SIR,--I highly prize the pipes, and shall intimate to people that
"Raleigh" smoked them, and doubtless he did. After a little practice I
shall be able to go further and say he did; they will then be the most
interesting features of my library's decorations. The Horse-shoe is
attracting a good deal of attention, because I have intimated that the
conqueror's horse cast it; it will attract more when I get my hand in and
say he cast it, I thank you for the pipes and the shoe; and also for the
official guide, which I read through at a single sitting. If a person
should say that about a book of mine I should regard it as good evidence
of the book's interest.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.


In his philosophy, What Is Man?, and now and again in his other
writings, we find Mark Twain giving small credit to the human mind
as an originator of ideas. The most original writer of his time, he
took no credit for pure invention and allowed none to others. The
mind, he declared, adapted, consciously or unconsciously; it did not
create. In a letter which follows he elucidates this doctrine. The
reference in it to the "captain" and to the kerosene, as the reader
may remember, have to do with Captain "Hurricane" Jones and his
theory of the miracles of "Isaac and of the prophets of Baal," as
expounded in Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion.

By a trick of memory Clemens gives The Little Duke as his suggestion