the girls were mightily delighted with your telegram. i am ever so glad you sent it. they had a royal time at their reception, but i missed it through being at a social spree in canada. this reminds meⒶemendation that i think i have acquired a canadian copyright at last. we have gone at it ignorantly and wrong-end first, heretofore. but this time i believe we have made no mistakes. we have done everything plainly, and squarely, have evaded no laws, wronged nobody, and yet i think our canadian copyright is as good and strong as our english one.

i do not know sidney drake. that is nothing against his fame, because there are celebrated business men in hartford whom i never have heard of. i merely have not happened to hear of this one; therefore i do not know how he stands as a publisher. but there is one thing which i do know; and that is, that if i were going to advise you to issue through a hartford house, i would say, every time, go to my former publishers, the american publishing company, 284 asylum st. they swindled me out of huge sums of money in the old days, but they do know how to push a book; and besides, i think they are honest people now. i think there was only one thief in the concern, and he is shoveling brimstone now.

mrs. clemens is steadily improving, and probably weighs thirty or forty pounds now. we leave here for the summer a couple of weeks hence, and then i shall expect her to come right up and be her old self within thirty days. we all send love and best wishes to you all.