The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete


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This strong interest is natural, for the heroine is my daughter, Susy,  
whom we lost. It was not intentional--it was a good while before I found  
it out.  
So I am sending you her picture to use--and to reproduce with  
photographic exactness the unsurpassable expression and all. May you  
find an artist who has lost an idol!  
Take as good care of the picture as you can and restore it to me when I  
come.  
I hope you will illustrate this tale considerably. Not humorous  
pictures. No. When they are good (or bad) one's humor gets no chance to  
play surprises on the reader. A humorous subject illustrated seriously  
is all right, but a humorous artist is no fit person for such work. You  
see, the humorous writer pretends to absolute seriousness (when he  
knows his trade) then for an artist--to step in and give his calculated  
gravity all away with a funny picture--oh, my land! It gives me the dry  
gripes just to think of it. It would be just about up to the average  
comic artist's intellectual level to make a funny picture of the horse  
kicking the lungs out of a trader. Hang it, the remark is funny--because  
the horse is not aware of it but the fact is not humorous, it is tragic  
and it is no subject for a humorous picture.  
Could I be allowed to sit in judgment upon the pictures before they are  
accepted--at least those in which Cathy may figure?  
1154  


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