Mark Twain, A Biography 1875-1886 | Page 9

was religiously taught. Down in the city, one night,
there was a grand display of fireworks, and the hilltop was a good place
from which to enjoy it; but it grew late after a little, and Susy was
ordered to bed. She said, thoughtfully:
"I wish I could sit up all night, as God does."
The baby, whom they still called "Bay," was a tiny, brown creature
who liked to romp in the sun and be rocked to sleep at night with a
song. Clemens often took them for extended' walks, pushing Bay in her
carriage. Once, in a preoccupied moment, he let go of the little vehicle
and it started downhill, gaining speed rapidly.
He awoke then, and set off in wild pursuit. Before he could overtake
the runaway carriage it had turned to the roadside and upset. Bay was
lying among the stones and her head was bleeding. Hastily binding the
wound with a handkerchief he started full speed with her up the hill
toward the house, calling for restoratives as he came. It was no serious
matter. The little girl was strong and did not readily give way to
affliction.
The children were unlike: Susy was all contemplation and nerves; Bay
serene and practical. It was said, when a pet cat died--this was some
years later--that Susy deeply reflected as to its life here and hereafter,
while Bay was concerned only as to the style of its funeral. Susy
showed early her father's quaintness of remark. Once they bought her a
heavier pair of shoes than she approved of. She was not in the best of
humors during the day, and that night, when at prayer-time her mother
said, "Now, Susy, put your thoughts on God," she answered, "Mama, I
can't with those shoes."
Clemens worked steadily that summer and did a variety of things. He
had given up a novel, begun with much enthusiasm, but he had
undertaken another long manuscript. By the middle of August he had
written several hundred pages of a story which was to be a continuation
of Tam Sawyer-- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now, here is a
curious phase of genius. The novel which for a time had filled him with
enthusiasm and faith had no important literary value, whereas,
concerning this new tale, he says:
"I like it only tolerably well, as far as I have gone, and may possibly
pigeonhole or burn the manuscript when it is done"--this of the story

which, of his books of pure fiction, will perhaps longest survive. He did,
in fact, give the story up, and without much regret, when it was about
half completed, and let it lie unfinished for years.
He wrote one short tale, "The Canvasser's Story," a burlesque of no
special distinction, and he projected for the Atlantic a scheme of
"blindfold novelettes," a series of stories to be written by well-known
authors and others, each to be constructed on the same plot. One can
easily imagine Clemens's enthusiasm over a banal project like that; his
impulses were always rainbow-hued, whether valuable or not; but it is
curious that Howells should welcome and even encourage an enterprise
so far removed from all the traditions of art. It fell to pieces, at last, of
inherent misconstruction. The title was to be, "A Murder and a
Marriage." Clemens could not arrive at a logical climax that did not
bring the marriage and the hanging on the same day.
The Atlantic started its "Contributors' Club," and Howells wrote to
Clemens for a paragraph or more of personal opinion on any subject,
assuring him that he could "spit his spite" out at somebody or
something as if it were a passage from a letter. That was a fairly large
permission to give Mark Twain. The paragraph he sent was the sort of
thing he would write with glee, and hug himself over in the thought of
Howells's necessity of rejecting it. In the accompanying note he said:
Say, Boss, do you want this to lighten up your old freight-train with? I
suppose you won't, but then it won't take long to say, so.
He was always sending impossible offerings to the magazines;
innocently enough sometimes, but often out of pure mischievousness.
Yet they were constantly after him, for they knew they were likely to
get a first-water gem. Mary Mopes Dodge, of St. Nicholas, wrote time
and again, and finally said:
"I know a man who was persecuted by an editor till he went distracted."
In his reading that year at the farm he gave more than customary
attention to one of his favorite books, Pepys' Diary, that captivating old
record which no one can follow continuously without catching the
infection of its manner and the desire of imitation. He had been reading
diligently