Apl. 3.
My Dear Howells:
It is a splendid notice, & will embolden weak-kneed journalistic admirers to speak out, & will modify or shut up the unfriendly. To “fear God & dread the Sunday school” exactly describesd that old feeling which I used to have but I couldn’t have formulated it.1 I want to enclose [ofne] of the illustrations in this letter, if I do not forget it.2 Of course the book is to be elaborately illustrated, & 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 h you have evidently read & corrected it, & 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 & magazines.3
I read that “Carnival of Crime” proof in New York when worn & witless & 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 - ing 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 have been [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 & contemptuous?
“Deuced” was not strong enough; so I met you half way with “devilish.”4
Mrs. Clemens has returned from New York with dreadful sore throat, & bones racked with rheumatism. She keeps her bed. “Aloha nui!” as the Kanakas say5
Mark.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Howells had sent proofsheets (now lost) of his review of Tom Sawyer,
for the May Atlantic Monthly. In it he observed that Tom
“has been bred to fear God and dread the Sunday-school according to the strictest rite of the faiths that have
characterized all the respectability of the West” (Howells 1876b, 621; for
the full review, see the Appendix “Reviews of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”). He probably enclosed the review with the
following letter (CU-MARK): Thesong by Francis
Boott, who published at least eight new songs in 1876, has not been identified. Howells had also sent Clemens music by Boott
in 1875 (see L6: 7 June 1875 to Howells, 492–94; 5 July 1875 to Howells, 503-6).). Clemens’s immediate acknowledgment to Boott of this latest song, probably enclosed
with the present letter to Howells, has not been found, but it elicited this reply (CU-MARK): 
If Clemens enclosed one of True Williams’s Tom Sawyer illustrations, it does not survive with this letter.
The Atlantic Monthly issued mid-month in advance of the cover date, so the May number was available in
mid-April.
Clemens read the proofsheets of “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in
Connecticut” while he was in New York lecturing (see 17
Mar 1876 to Redpath, n. 2). In the published version the hyphenated phrase is “o - w - n s - n - i - v - e - l - i - n - g
d - r - a - w - l—baby!”; it is not known who was responsible for the minor revision (SLC 1876h, 652).
Meaning “great love,” as Clemens learned in 1866, while in Hawaii as correspondent for the Sacramento Union ( N&J1, 224).
Copy-text:Previous publication:
MTL, 1:274–75; MTHL, 1:128–29.
Provenance:
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
ofne • [‘f’ partly formed]
personal?—Should • ~?— | ~|Should
altered?—or • ~?— | ~|or
