--How's that?

It will be a starchy book, and should be full of snappy pictures
--especially pictures worked in with the letterpress. The dedication
will be worth the price of the volume--thus:

To the Late Cain.
This Book is Dedicated:

Not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little respect;
not on account of sympathy with him, for his bloody deed placed him
without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking: but out of a mere human
commiseration for him that it was his misfortune to live in a dark age
that knew not the beneficent Insanity Plea.

I think it will do.
Yrs. CLEMENS.

P. S.--The reaction is beginning and my stock is looking up. I am
getting the bulliest offers for books and almanacs; am flooded with
lecture invitations, and one periodical offers me $6,000 cash for 12
articles, of any length and on any subject, treated humorously or
otherwise.


The suggested dedication "to the late Cain" may have been the
humoristic impulse of the moment. At all events, it did not
materialize.

Clemens's enthusiasm for work was now such that he agreed with