Twains Letters vol 4 1886-1900 | Page 8

on the street corner with
their hats in their hands.
Mailed Answer:
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of recent date is received, but I am obliged by
press of work to decline.
The manager of a traveling theatrical company wrote that he had taken
the liberty of dramatizing Tom Sawyer, and would like also the use of
the author's name--the idea being to convey to the public that it was a
Mark Twain play. In return for this slight favor the manager sent an
invitation for Mark Twain to come and see the play-- to be present on
the opening night, as it were, at his (the manager's) expense. He added
that if the play should be a go in the cities there might be some
"arrangement" of profits. Apparently these inducements did not appeal
to Mark Twain. The long unmailed reply is the more interesting, but

probably the briefer one that follows it was quite as effective.
Unmailed Answer:
HARTFORD, Sept. 8, '87. DEAR SIR,--And so it has got around to
you, at last; and you also have "taken the liberty." You are No. 1365.
When 1364 sweeter and better people, including the author, have
"tried" to dramatize Tom Sawyer and did not arrive, what sort of show
do you suppose you stand? That is a book, dear sir, which cannot be
dramatized. One might as well try to dramatize any other hymn. Tom
Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose form to give it a worldly air.
Why the pale doubt that flitteth dim and nebulous athwart the forecastle
of your third sentence? Have no fears. Your piece will be a Go. It will
go out the back door on the first night. They've all done it --the 1364.
So will 1365. Not one of us ever thought of the simple device of
half-soling himself with a stove-lid. Ah, what suffering a little
hindsight would have saved us. Treasure this hint.
How kind of you to invite me to the funeral. Go to; I have attended a
thousand of them. I have seen Tom Sawyer's remains in all the different
kinds of dramatic shrouds there are. You cannot start anything fresh.
Are you serious when you propose to pay my expence--if that is the
Susquehannian way of spelling it? And can you be aware that I charge
a hundred dollars a mile when I travel for pleasure? Do you realize that
it is 432 miles to Susquehanna? Would it be handy for you to send me
the $43,200 first, so I could be counting it as I come along; because
railroading is pretty dreary to a sensitive nature when there's nothing
sordid to buck at for Zeitvertreib.
Now as I understand it, dear and magnanimous 1365, you are going to
recreate Tom Sawyer dramatically, and then do me the compliment to
put me in the bills as father of this shady offspring. Sir, do you know
that this kind of a compliment has destroyed people before now?
Listen.
Twenty-four years ago, I was strangely handsome. The remains of it are
still visible through the rifts of time. I was so handsome that human
activities ceased as if spellbound when I came in view, and even
inanimate things stopped to look--like locomotives, and district
messenger boys and so-on. In San Francisco, in the rainy season I was
often mistaken for fair weather. Upon one occasion I was traveling in
the Sonora region, and stopped for an hour's nooning, to rest my horse

and myself. All the town came out to look. The tribes of Indians
gathered to look. A Piute squaw named her baby for me,--a voluntary
compliment which pleased me greatly. Other attentions were paid me.
Last of all arrived the president and faculty of Sonora University and
offered me the post of Professor of Moral Culture and the Dogmatic
Humanities; which I accepted gratefully, and entered at once upon my
duties. But my name had pleased the Indians, and in the deadly
kindness of their hearts they went on naming their babies after me. I
tried to stop it, but the Indians could not understand why I should
object to so manifest a compliment. The thing grew and grew and
spread and spread and became exceedingly embarrassing. The
University stood it a couple of years; but then for the sake of the
college they felt obliged to call a halt, although I had the sympathy of
the whole faculty. The president himself said to me, "I am as sorry as I
can be for you, and would still hold out if there were any hope ahead;
but you see how it is: there are a hundred and thirty-two of them
already, and fourteen precincts to hear from. The circumstance has
brought your name into most wide and unfortunate renown. It