Buf. 15.
My Dear Bro:
I am sorry to ever have to read anybody’s MSS, it is such useless work—the Great Public’s is the only opinion worth having, & you can’t get that by applying a fire-assay to a random specimen of it.
My opinion of a children’s article is wholly worthless, for I never saw one that I thought was worth the ink it was written with, & yet you know & I know that such literature is marvelously popular & worth heaps of money.1
What can my criticism be worth? I find that you are just like everybody else—can put your heart into a letter (naturalness, that pearl of price, follows by inexorable law,) when it is a private one, but the moment you set out to p write a public letter you forget that the Public is simply a multiplication of the poor, common, human Private individual—you forgoet that & look upon it as a vast, vague, unreal Shape, of some mysterious kind, & so you mount a high horse & a dismally articficial one, & go frothing in a way that nobody can poss understand or [sympathize] [with. Your ]. [ n ] heart & soul & are not in this [article. Then ] you certainly can’t get anybody else’s into it. Your private letter to me stirs me—& would enlist the instant interest of the veriest stranger—consequently it is a good & [ valu ] worthy literary production—& the other isn’t.
Now that is only my opinion—Mollie’s is on the other side & is really worth more than mine, since I have ‸no‸ love for children’s [literature. Therefore ], toss my opinion to the winds & hold fast to the more worthy one.2
But I tell you this. It is the only infallible rule in literature, too: If you are Your heart & soul must be in your work—any work—to achieve success with it.
If you were to set out to write to Mollie (at a distance & unacquainted with If you were to set out to write to Mollie (at a distance & unacquainted with the matter,) an outpouring of your heart upon the your experiences in Bliss’s office, knowing that no eye would see it but hers & hence you need not mince anything, don’t you know it would be a readable article? Of course it would.
But my opinion is worth infinitely less than Mollie’s about this article. Let that comfort & encourage you.
At any other time your experiences there would distress me greatly—but for I am & have been for weeks so buried under beetling Alps of trouble that yours look like little passing discomforts to me.—[molehills]. {And yet I know very well that every ‸each‸ [individual’s] troubles are stately from his point of view.}
I am the worst man in the world to send MS to. Now don’t repeat that. It hurts me a hundred times more to give [ a ] a disparaging opinion than it can hurt the writer to receive it. Considering that you have read my article in the Galaxy on this very subject, I should have thought you would have spared me.3
I am simply half-crazy—that is the [truth.] And I wish I was the other half.
S Yrs
Samℓ
[new page:] 4
If the Introductory pages are the feature, leave out the rest.
If the portraits of the grotesque monsters are the feature, leave out the [rest. ]
If the sea-story is the feature, leave the ev out everything else.
Let there be consistency somewhere
Perhaps you will say that the object & consistency of [ the these] apparently irreconcilable unnecessities will appear in the subsequent chapters—in which case I have nothing more to say—but if it strikes me as strained & incoherent, it might strike others so.5
But lay this away (never destroy MS.) for 3 months & then read it & see if you can’t better [it. Meantime] write about some invention of somebody’s that you are filled with admiration [of, or] which you thoroughly despise—write about something that you feel.
Mrs. Mollie Clemens | 149 Asylum st6 | Hartford | Conn [postmarked:] buffalo n.y. mar 18 [docketed by OC:] Criticism
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Mollie thinks it good and suitable for children. . .
. But I doubt the suitableness of this story for children, and am
inclined to think Bliss is right in thinking he can get plenty of
people to write better for children. If you think with Mollie please
send it right back for the children’s department of the
Publisher. . . . If you think that with the alterations noted it
will do for some paper or magazine please send it—and if
you don’t like it at all throw it in the fire. (13 Mar 71 to
SLC [2nd], CU-MARK)
Every man who becomes editor of a newspaper or
magazine straightway begins to receive MSS. from literary aspirants,
together with requests that he will deliver judgment upon the same.
And after complying in eight or ten instances, he finally takes
refuge in a general sermon upon the subject, which he inserts in his
publication, and always afterward refers such correspondents to that
sermon for answer. The “public sermon” he then
proceeded to “construct” stressed the necessity of
serving an uncomplaining and unremunerated literary apprenticeship in
order to achieve recognition from the public, “the only
critic whose judgment is worth anything at all” (SLC 1870,
732–33).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L4, 362–365.
Provenance:see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
sympathize • [‘p’ over miswritten ‘m’]
with. Your • with.—|Your
n • [possibly ‘r’]
article. Then • article.—|Then
valu • [possibly ‘natu’]
literature. Therefore • literature.—|Therefore
molehills • mole-|hills
individual’s • indivivdual’s [‘v’ partly formed]
a a • a | a
truth. • truth..
rest. [¶] If • rest.—| [¶] If
the these • thehese
it. Meantime • it.—|Meantime
of, or • of orf, or
