--figuratively speaking--it was a tramp stealing a ride on the lightning
express. Ah, how did that ignorant village-born peasant woman know the
human being so well? She has no more intellect than a tadpole--until it
comes to business then she is a marvel! Am I sorry I wrote the book?
Most certainly not. You say you have 500 (converts) in Glasgow. Fifty
years from now, your posterity will not count them by the hundred, but by
the thousand. I feel absolutely sure of this.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.


Clemens wrote very little for publication that year, but he enjoyed
writing for his own amusement, setting down the things that boiled,
or bubbled, within him: mainly chapters on the inconsistencies of
human deportment, human superstition and human creeds. The "Letters
from the Earth" referred to in the following, were supposed to have
been written by an immortal visitant from some far realm to a
friend, describing the absurdities of mankind. It is true, as he
said, that they would not do for publication, though certainly the
manuscript contains some of his mgt delicious writing. Miss
Wallace, to whom the next letter is written, had known Mark Twain in
Bermuda, and, after his death, published a dainty volume entitled
Mark Twain in the Happy Island.


"STORMFIELD," REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
Nov. 13, '09.
DEAR BETSY,--I've been writing "Letters from the Earth," and if you will
come here and see us I will--what? Put the MS in your hands, with the
places to skip marked? No. I won't trust you quite that far. I'll read