(I feel sort of mean trying to persuade a man to put down a critical piece of work at a critical time, but yet I am honest in thinking it would not hurt the work nor impair your interest in it to come under the circumstances.) Mrs. Clemens says, “Maybe the Howellses could come Monday if they cannot come Saturday; ask them; it is worth trying.”  Well, how’s that?  Could you?  It would be splendid if you could.  Drop me a postal card—­I should have a twinge of conscience if I forced you to write a letter, (I am honest about that,)—­and if you find you can’t make out to come, tell me that you bodies will come the next Saturday if the thing is possible, and stay over Sunday. 
                                   Yrs ever
          
                                   mark.

     Howells, however, did not come to the club meeting, but promised to
     come soon when they could have a quiet time to themselves together. 
     As to Huck’s language, he declared: 

“I’d have that swearing out in an instant.  I suppose I didn’t notice it because the locution was so familiar to my Western sense, and so exactly the thing that Huck would say.”  Clemens changed the phrase to, “They comb me all to thunder,” and so it stands to-day.

The “Carnival of Crime,” having served its purpose at the club, found quick acceptance by Howells for the Atlantic.  He was so pleased with it, in fact, that somewhat later he wrote, urging that its author allow it to be printed in a dainty book, by Osgood, who made a specialty of fine publishing.  Meantime Howells had written his Atlantic notice of Tom Sawyer, and now inclosed Clemens a proof of it.  We may judge from the reply that it was satisfactory.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Apl 3, ’76.  My dear Howells,—­It is a splendid notice and will embolden weak-kneed journalistic admirers to speak out, and will modify or shut up the unfriendly.  To “fear God and dread the Sunday school” exactly described that old feeling which I used to have, but I couldn’t have formulated it.  I want to enclose one of the illustrations in this letter, if I do not forget it.  Of course the book is to be elaborately illustrated, and I think that many of the pictures are considerably above the American average, in conception if not in execution.

I do not re-enclose your review to you, for you have evidently read and corrected it, and so I judge you do not need it.  About two days after the Atlantic issues I mean to begin to send books to principal journals and magazines.

I read the “Carnival of Crime” proof in New York when worn and witless and so left some things unamended which I might possibly have altered had I been at home.  For instance, “I shall always address you in your own S-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l, baby.”  I saw that you objected to something there, but I did not understand what!  Was it that it was too personal?  Should the language be altered?—­or the hyphens taken out?  Won’t you please fix it the way it ought to be, altering the language as you choose, only making it bitter and contemptuous?