The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain (good book recommendations .TXT) 📕

Eighth Paragraph. She “rode away to assault and capture a stronghold.” Very well; but you do not tell us whether she succeeded or not. You should not worry the reader with uncertainties like that. I will remind you once more that clarity is a good thing in literature. An apprentice cannot do better than keep this useful rule in mind. Closing Sentences. Corrections which are not corrections.

Ninth Paragraph. “Known” history. That word is a polish which is too delicate for me; there doesn’t seem to be any sense in it. This would have surprised me, last week.

Second Sentence. It cost me an hour’s study before I found out what it meant. I see, now, that it is intended to mean what it meant before. It really does accomplish its intent, I think, though in a most intricate and slovenly fashion. What was your idea in reframing it? Merely in order that you might add this to your other editorial contributions and be able to say to people that the most of the Introduction was your work? I am afraid that that was really your sly and unparliamentary scheme. Certainly we do seem to live in a very wicked world.

Closing Sentence. There is your empty “however” again. I cannot think what makes you so flatulent.

II In Captivity. “Remainder.” It is curious and interesting to notice what an attraction a fussy, mincing, nickel-plated artificial word has for you. This is not well.

Third Sentence. But she was held to ransom; it wasn’t a case of “should have been” and it wasn’t a case of “if it had been offered”; it was offered, and also accepted, as the second paragraph shows. You ought never to edit except when awake.

Fourth Sentence. Why do you wish to change that? It was more than “demanded”; it was required. Have you no sense of shades of meaning in words?

Fifth Sentence. Changing it to “benefactress” takes the dignity out of it. If I had called her a braggart, I suppose you would have polished her into a braggartess, with your curious and random notions about the English tongue.

Closing Sentence. “Sustained” is sufficiently nickel-plated to meet the requirements of your disease, I trust. “Wholly” adds nothing; the sentence means just what it meant before. In the rest of the sentence you sacrifice simplicity to airy fussiness.

Second Paragraph. It was not blood money, unteachable ass, any more than is the money that buys a house or a horse; it was an ordinary business transaction of the time, and was not dishonorable. “With her hands, feet and neck both chained,” etc. The restricted word “both” cannot be applied to three things, but only to two. “Fence:” You “lifted” that word from further along⁠—and with what valuable result? The next sentence⁠—after your doctoring of it⁠—has no meaning. The one succeeding it⁠—after your doctoring of it⁠—refers to nothing, wanders around in space, has no meaning and no reason for existing, and is by a shade or two more demented and twaddlesome than anything hitherto ground out of your strange and interesting editorial mill.

Closing Sentence, “Neither” for “either.” Have you now debauched the grammar to your taste?

Third Paragraph. It was sound English before you decayed it. Sell it to the museum.

Fourth Paragraph. I note the compliment you pay yourself, margined opposite the closing sentence: “Easier translation.” But it has two defects. In the first place it is a mistranslation, and in the second place it translates half of the grace out of Joan’s remark.

Fifth Paragraph. Why are you so prejudiced against fact and so indecently fond of fiction? Her generalship was not “that of a tried and trained military experience,” for she hadn’t had any, and no one swore that she had had any. I had stated the facts; you should have reserved your fictions.

Note: To be intelligible, that whole paragraph must consist of a single sentence; in breaking it up into several, you have knocked the sense all out of it.

Eighth Paragraph. “When the flames leapt up and enveloped her frail form” is handsome, very handsome, even elegant, but it isn’t yours; you hooked it out of “The Costermonger’s Bride; or The Fire Fiend’s Foe.” To take other people’s things is not right, and God will punish you. “Parched” lips? How do you know they were? Why do you make statements which you cannot verify, when you have no motive for it but to work in a word which you think is nobby?

III The Rehabilitation. “Their statements were taken down as evidence.” Wonderful! If you had failed to mention that particular, many persons might have thought they were taken down as entertainment.

IV The Riddle of All Time. I note your marginal remark: “Riddle⁠—Anglice?” Look in your spelling book. “We can understand how the genius was created,” etc., “by steady and congenial growth.” We can’t understand anything of the kind; genius is not “created” by any farming process⁠—it is born. You are thinking of potatoes. Note: Whenever I say “circumstances” you change it to “environment”; and you persistently change my thats into whiches and my whiches into thats. This is merely silly, you know.

Second Paragraph. I note your marginal remark,“2 comprehends.” I suppose someone has told you that repetition is tautology, and then has left you to believe that repetition is always tautology. But let it go; with your limitations one would not be able to teach you how to distinguish between the repetition which isn’t tautology and the repetition which is.

Closing Sentence. Your tipsy emendation, when straightened up on its legs and examined, is found to say this: “We fail to see her issue thus equipped, and we cannot understand why.” That is to say, she did not issue so equipped, and you cannot make out why she didn’t. That is the riddle that defeats you, labor at it as you may? Why, if that had happened, it wouldn’t be a riddle at all⁠—except to you⁠—but a thing likely to happen to