but you will save labor by stopping with that solitary convert, for he

is the only intelligent one you will bag. In reality the stories

are only alligator pears--one merely eats them for the sake of the

salad-dressing. Uncle Remus is most deftly drawn, and is a lovable and

delightful creation; he, and the little boy, and their relations with

each other, are high and fine literature, and worthy to live, for their

own sakes; and certainly the stories are not to be credited with them.

But enough of this; I seem to be proving to the man that made the

multiplication table that twice one are two.

I have been thinking, yesterday and to-day (plenty of chance to think,

as I am abed with lumbago at our little summering farm among the

solitudes of the Mountaintops,) and I have concluded that I can answer

one of your questions with full confidence--thus: Make it a subscription

book. Mighty few books that come strictly under the head of literature

will sell by subscription; but if Uncle Remus won't, the gift of

prophecy has departed out of me. When a book will sell by subscription,

it will sell two or three times as many copies as it would in the trade;

and the profit is bulkier because the retail price is greater.....

You didn't ask me for a subscription-publisher. If you had, I should

have recommended Osgood to you. He inaugurates his subscription

department with my new book in the fall.....

Now the doctor has been here and tried to interrupt my yarn about "The

Golden Arm," but I've got through, anyway.

579

The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete