ABSTRACT
After scattering the lynch mob at the beginning of the third and final stint writing Huckleberry Finn in 1883, Twain’s pen cruised smoothly to the end. In a letter to William Dean Howells on 20 July 1883, Twain wrote:
I haven’t piled up MS so in years as I have done since we came here to the farm [in Elmira] three weeks & a half ago. Why, it’s like old times, to step straight into the study, damp from the breakfast table, & sail right in & sail right on, the whole day long, without thought of running short of stuff or words. I wrote 4000 words to-day & I touch 3000 & upwards pretty often, & don’t fall below 2600 on any working day. . . . I . . . am away along in a big one that I have half-finished two or three years ago. I expect to complete it in a month or six weeks or two months more. . . . It’s a kind of companion to Tom Sawyer.
( Mark Twain-Howells Letters Vol. 1 435)