I have mailed one set of the slips to London, & told Bentley you would print Sept. 15 for in October Atlantic, & he must not print earlier in Temple Bar. Have I got the dates & things right?

I am powerful glad to see that No. 1 reads a nation sight better in print than it did in MS. I told Bentley we’d send him the slips each time 6 weeks before day of publication. We can do that, can’t we? Two months ahead would be still better I suppose, but I don’t know.

“Ah Sin” went a-booming at the Fifth Avenue. The reception of Col. Sellers was calm compared to it. If Bret Harte had suppressed his name (it didn’t occur to me to suggest it) the play would have received as great applause in the papers as it did in the Theatre. x The criticisms were just; the criticisms of the great New York press dailies are always just, always intelligent, & always square & honest—notwithstanding by by a blunder which nobody was seriously to blame for I was made to say exactly the opposite of this in a Baltimore paper newspaper some time ago. Never said it at all, & moreover I never thought it. I could not publicly correct it before the play appeared in New York, because that would look as if I had really said that thing & then was moved by fears for my pocket & my reputation to take it back. But I can correct it now, & shall do it; for now my motives cannot be impugned. When I began this letter it had not occurred to me to use you in this connection, but it occurs to me now. Your opinion & mine, uttered a year ago, & repeated more than once since, that the candor & ability of the New York critics were beyond question, is a matter which makes it proper enough that I should speak through you at this time. Therefore if you will print this paragraph somewhere, it may remove the impression that I say unjust things which I do not think, merely for the pleasure of talking.

There, now. Can’t you say—

“In a letter to Mr. Howells of the Atlantic Monthly, Mark Twain describes the reception of the new comedy “Ah Sin,” & then goes on to say:” &c

Beg

Beginning at the x with The words, “The criticisms were just.”

Will you cut that paragraph out of this letter & precede it with the remarks suggested (or with better ones,) & send it to the Globe or some other paper? You can’t do me a bigger favor; & yet if it is in the least disagreeable, you mustn’t think of it. But let me know, right away, for I want to correct this thing before it grows stale again. I explained myself to only one critic (the World)—the consequence was a noble notice of the play. This one called on me, else I shouldn’t have explained myself to him. Mrs. Clemens says, “Don’t ask that of Mr. Howells—it will be disagreeable to him.” I hadn’t thought it, but I will bet two to one on the correctness of her instinct. We shall see.

I have been putting in a deal of hard work on that play in New York, & have left hardly a foot-print of Harte in it anywhere. But it is full of incurable defects: to-wit, Harte’s deliberate thefts & plagiarisms, & my own unconscious ones. I don’t believe Harte ever had an idea that he came by honestly. He is the most abandoned thief that defiles the earth.

My old Plunkett family seemed wonderfully coarse & vulgar on the stage, but it was because they were played in such an outrageously & inexcusably coarse way. The Chinaman is killingly funny. I don’t know when I have enjoyed anything as much as I did him. The people say there isn’t enough of him in the piece. That’sⒶemendation a triumph—there’ll never be any more of him in it.

John Brougham said, “Read the list of things which the critics have condemned in the piece, & you have unassailable proof that the play contains all the requirements of success & a long life.”

That is true. Nearly every time the audience roared I knew it was over something that would be condemned in the morning (justly, too) but must be left in—for low comedies are written for the drawing-room, the kitchen & the stable, & if you cut out the kitchen & the stable the drawing-room can’t support the play by itself.

There was as much money in the house the first 2 nights as in the first 10 of Sellers. Haven’t heard from the third—I came away.