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“I would not wound you for the world,” Clemens wrote. “But if I have nevertheless done it you have your revenge, since I have sacrificed my day to you: for he that desires to do the best work he can, doth not put a part of his day’s steam into a letter, first & then work with a three-quarter head of it on a book afterward, you know.

“But no matter — the day is of no consequence, & I had a strong desire to say some things to you which I honestly believed might be of value & service to you.”

The letter ends with Clemens repeating that he did not mean “to be harsh” with Munro, and is signed: “Truly yours, S.L. Clemens.”

Born in 1860, Munro is known to have written occasionally for Canadian newspapers in the late 19th century and — against Clemens’ advice — self-published his first book in 1886, at age 26.

The book, printed in Toronto, was titled A Blundering Boy: A Humorous Story.

The book, about a boy named William who was prone to mistakes in life that sometimes “partook of the ludicrous,” was apparently not a big seller in post-Confederation Canada.

Munro followed with an underwhelming collection of anecdotes from the legal profession — Splinters; Or, a Grist of Giggles

— and published another unheralded collection of humorous writings in 1889 with

Groans and Grins of One Who Survived in 1889.

In 2003, when Clemens’ 1881 letter to Munro first emerged from a private U.S. collection, it was noted that in an auction catalogue that the Canadian’s own books “do not seem to have stood the test of time.”

But in serving as Clemens’ muse for an impromptu treatise on book-writing, Munro left a genuine legacy to the world of literature.

“We have found nothing comparable to this letter in the auction records for any major 19th-century American writer,” a San Francisco auction house stated when the letter was resold at a 2007 sale. “And thus it is, in all probability, the most profound statement on the craft of writing by any of those writers that can be obtained.”

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