He began to temporize and finally backed out. Clemens tried
to inveigle Osgood into the trip, but without success; also John Hay, but
Hay had a new baby at his house just then--"three days old, and with a
voice beyond price," he said, offering it as an excuse for
non-acceptance. So the plan for revisiting the river and the conclusion
of the book were held in abeyance for nearly seven years.
Those early piloting chapters, as they appeared in the Atlantic,
constituted Mark Twain's best literary exhibit up to that time. In some
respects they are his best literature of any time. As pictures of an
intensely interesting phase of life, they are so convincing, so real, and
at the same time of such extraordinary charm and interest, that if the
English language should survive a thousand years, or ten times as long,
they would be as fresh and vivid at the end of that period as the day
they were penned. In them the atmosphere of, the river and its
environment--its pictures, its thousand aspects of life--are reproduced
with what is no less than literary necromancy. Not only does he make you
smell the river you can fairly hear it breathe. On the appearance of the
first number John Hay wrote:
"It is perfect; no more nor less. I don't see how you do it," and added,
"you know what my opinion is of time not spent with you."
Howells wrote:
You are doing the science of piloting splendidly. Every word
interesting, and don't you drop the series till you've got every bit
of anecdote and reminiscence into it.
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