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for it is rather out of my line. I have not altered the old colored
woman's story except to begin at the beginning, instead of the middle,
as she did--and traveled both ways....
Yrs Ever
MARK.
But Howells was delighted with it. He referred to its "realest kind
of black talk," and in another place added, "This little story
delights me more and more. I wish you had about forty of them."
Along with the "True Story" Mark Twain had sent the "Fable for Good
Old Boys and Girls"; but this Howells returned, not, as he said,
because he didn't like it, but because the Atlantic on matters of
religion was just in that "Good Lord, Good Devil condition when a
little fable like yours wouldn't leave it a single Presbyterian,
Baptist, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Methodist, or Millerite paying
subscriber, while all the deadheads would stick to it and abuse it
in the denominational newspapers!"
But the shorter MS. had been only a brief diversion. Mark Twain was
bowling along at a book and a play. The book was Tom Sawyer, as
already mentioned, and the play a dramatization from The Gilded Age.
Clemens had all along intended to dramatize the story of Colonel
Sellers, and was one day thunderstruck to receive word from
California that a San Francisco dramatist had appropriated his
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