Then there was music! There came a freshet of newspaper reporters and they besieged poor Miss Lyon all day. Of course I was in bed. I am always in bed. She barred the stairs against them. They were bound to see me, if only for a moment, but none of them got by her guard. They said a report had sprung up that I had written a letter some months before to the Brooklyn Public Library; that according to that report the letter was pungent and valuable, and they wanted a copy of it. They said the head officials of the Brooklyn Library declared that they had never seen the letter and that they had never heard of it until the reporters came and asked for it. I judged by this that my man—who was not in the head library, but in a branch of it—was keeping his secret all right, and I believed he could be trusted to continue to keep that secret, for his own sake as well as mine. That letter would be a bombshell for me if it got out—but it would hoist him, too. So I felt pretty confident that for his own sake, if for no other, he would protect me.

Miss Lyon had a hard day of it, but I had a most enjoyable one. She never allowed any reporter to get an idea of the nature of the letter; she smoothed all those young fellows down, in her tactful and fascinating and diplomatic way, and sent them away mightily pleased with her, but empty. Each time that she repulsed an enemy she came up stairs, told me all about it and what the enemy had said, and how ingeniously he had pleaded, and we had very good times together. Once she had three of these persuasive envoys on her hands at once—but no matter. She beat the whole battery and they got nothing.

They renewed the assault next day, but I told her to never mind—human nature would win the victory for us. There would be an earthquake somewhere, or a municipal upheaval here, or a threat of war in Europe—something would be sure to happen in the way of a big excitement that would call the boys away from No. 21 Fifth Avenue for twenty-four hours, and that would answer every purpose; they wouldn’t think of that letter again, and we should have peace.

I knew the reporters would get on the right track very soon, so I wrote Mr. Dickinson and warned him to keep his mouth hermetically sealed. I told him to be wise and wary. His answer bears date March 28th.

BAY RIDGE BRANCH
BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY
73D STREET AND SECOND AVENUE
TELEPHONE No. 338 BAY RIDGE

BROOKLYN-NEW YORK, Mar. 28, ’06.

Dear Mr. Clemens,

Your letter of the 26th inst. rec’d this moment. As I have now been transferred to the above address, it has been a long time reaching me.

I have tried to be wary and wise and am very grateful to you for your reticence. The poor old B.P.L. has achieved some very undesirable notoriety. I thought my head was coming off when I heard from my chief on the telephone night before last. But yesterday he began to be amused, I think, at the tea pot tempest.

Last night I reached home at 11.30 and found a Herald man sitting on the steps, leaning his head against the door post. He had been there since 7.30 and said he would cheerfully sit there till morning if I would give him the least hint of the letter’s contents. But I was wise and wary.

At the January meeting it was decided not to place Huck and Tom in the Children’s rooms along with “Little Nellie’s Silver Mine” and “Dotty Dimple at Home.” But the books have not been “restricted” in any sense whatever. They are placed on open shelves among the adult fiction, and any child is free to read adult fiction if he chooses.

I am looking forward with great eagerness to seeing and hearing you tomorrow night at the Waldorf. As I have a wild scheme for a national library for the blind, they have been generous enough to place a couple of boxes at my disposal. The “young lady” whom you mentioned in your letter—the Sup’t of the Children’s Dep’t—and several other B.P.L.’s, I hope will be present.

I am very sorry to have caused you so much annoyance through reporters, but be sure that I have said nothing nor will say anything to them about the contents of that letter. And please don’t you tell on me!

Yours very respectfully,
Asa Don Dickinson.

I saw him at the Waldorf the next night, where Choate and I made our public appeal in behalf of the blind, and found him to be a very pleasant and safe and satisfactory man.

Now that I have heard from France, I think the incident is closed—for it had its brief run in England, two or three weeks ago, and in Germany also. When people let “Huck Finn” alone he goes peacefully along, damaging a few children here and there and yonder, but there will be plenty of children in heaven without those, so it is no great matter. It is only when well-meaning people expose him that he gets his real chance to do harm.