The nuisance of keeping a scrap-book is: 1. One never has paste
or gum tragacanth handy; 2. Mucilage won't stick, or stay, 4 weeks;
3. Mucilage sucks out the ink and makes the scraps unreadable;
4. To daub and paste 3 or 4 pages of scraps is tedious, slow, nasty and
tiresome. My idea is this: Make a scrap-book with leaves veneered or
coated with gum-stickum of some kind; wet the page with sponge, brush,
rag or tongue, and dab on your scraps like postage stamps.

Lay on the gum in columns of stripes.

Each stripe of gum the length of say 20 ems, small pica, and as broad as
your finger; a blank about as broad as your finger between each 2
stripes--so in wetting the paper you need not wet any more of the gum
than your scrap or scraps will cover--then you may shut up the book and
the leaves won't stick together.

Preserve, also, the envelope of this letter--postmark ought to be good
evidence of the date of this great humanizing and civilizing invention.

I'll put it into Dan Slote's hands and tell him he must send you all over
America, to urge its use upon stationers and booksellers--so don't buy
into a newspaper. The name of this thing is "Mark Twain's Self-Pasting
Scrapbook."

All well here. Shall be up a P. M. Tuesday. Send the carriage.
Yr Bro.
S. L. CLEMENS.