I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker." A note was sent to Mr.Clemens asking him if the letter was genuine and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that.

Mr.
Clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter from his unpublished autobiography: 1904.

VILLA QUARTO, FLORENCE, JANUARY.
Dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me, but it goes very well, and is going to save time and "language"-- the kind of language that soothes vexation.
I have dictated to a typewriter before--but not autobiography.

Between that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap--more than thirty years! It is sort of lifetime.

In that wide interval much has happened--to the type-machine as well as to the rest of us.