Mark Twain's Method
At that point Mark Twain came to the rescue by offering to make Mr. Harper's speech for him. "I'm a publisher myself," he explained, "and I'll speak for the publishers."
A roar of applause welcomed the suggestion, and Mr. Clemens proceeded to make the speech. In the course of it he spoke of the multitude of young authors who beset every publisher and beseech him for advice after he has explained that their manuscripts are "not available" for publication by his own firm, with its peculiar limitations. Most publishers cruelly refuse, he said, to do anything for these innocents. "I never do that," he added. "I always give them good advice, and more than that, I always do something for them—I give them notes of introduction to Gilder."
I am persuaded that many scores of the notes of introduction brought to me have been written in precisely that spirit of helpless helpfulness.
Sometimes, however, letters of introduction, given thoughtlessly, are productive of trouble far more serious than the mere waste of a busy man's time. It is a curious fact that most persons stand ready to give letters of introduction upon acquaintance so slender that they would never think of personally introducing the two concerned, or personally vouching for the one to whom the letter is given.
When I was editing Hearth and Home Theodore Tilton gave a young Indiana woman a letter of introduction to me. He afterwards admitted to me that he knew nothing whatever about the young woman.
"But what can one do in such a case?" he asked. "She was charming and she wanted to know you; she was interested in you as a Hoosier writer"—the Indiana school of literature had not established itself at that early day—"and when she learned that I knew you well she asked for a letter of introduction. What could I do? Could I say to her, 'My dear young lady, I know very little about you, and my friend, George Cary Eggleston, is so innocent and unsophisticated a person that I dare not introduce you to him without some certificate of character?' No. I could only give her the letter she wanted, trusting you to discount any commendatory phrases it might contain, in the light of your acquaintance with the ways of a world in which letters of introduction are taken with grains of salt. Really, if I mean to commend one person to another, I always send a private letter to indorse my formal letter of introduction, and to assure my friend that there are no polite lies in it."
Some Dangerous Letters of Introduction
In this case the young woman did nothing very dreadful. Her character was doubtless above reproach and her reformatory impulses were no more offensive than reformatory impulses that concern others usually are. My only complaint of her was that she condemned me without a hearing, giving me no opportunity to say why sentence should not be pronounced upon me.
In her interview, she was altogether charming. She was fairly well acquainted with literature, and was keenly appreciative of it. We talked for an hour on such subjects, and then she went away. A week or so later she sent me a copy of the Indiana newspaper for which she was a correspondent. In it was a page interview with me in which all that I had said and a great deal that I had not said was set forth in detail. There was also a graphic description of my office surroundings. Among these surroundings was my pipe, which lay "naked and not ashamed" on my desk. Referring to it, the young woman wrote that one saddening thing in her visit to me was the discovery that "this gifted young man is a victim of the tobacco habit."