XCVIII. “OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI”
Howells had been urging Clemens to do something more for the Atlantic, specifically something for the January number. Clemens cudgeled his brains, but finally declared he must give it up:
Mrs. Clemens has diligently persecuted me day by day with urgings to
go to work and do that something, but it's no use. I find I can't.
We are in such a state of worry and endless confusion that my head
won't go.
Two hours later he sent another hasty line:
I take back the remark that I can't write for the January number,
for Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods, and I got to
telling him about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory and
grandeur as I saw them (during four years) from the pilot-house. He
said, “What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!” I hadn't
thought of that before. Would you like a series of papers to run
through three months or six or nine—or about four months, say?
Howells welcomed this offer as an echo of his own thought. He had come from a piloting family himself, and knew the interest that Mark Twain could put into such a series.
Acting promptly under the new inspiration, Clemens forthwith sent the first chapter of that monumental, that absolutely unique, series of papers on Mississippi River life, which to-day constitutes one of his chief claims to immortality.
His first number was in the nature of an experiment. Perhaps, after all, the idea would not suit the Atlantic readers.
“Cut it, scarify it, reject it, handle it with entire freedom,” he wrote, and awaited the result.
The “result” was that Howells expressed his delight: