"I have told you nothing about man that is not true." You must pardon me if I repeat that remark now and then in these letters; I want you to take seriously the things I am telling you, and I feel that if I were in your place and you in mine, I should need that reminder from time to time, to keep my credulity from flagging.

In Letters from the Earth, Twain presents himself as the Father of History—reviewing and interpreting events from the Garden of Eden through the Fall and the Flood, translating the papers of Adam and his descendants through the generations. First published fifty years after his death, this eclectic collection is vintage Twain: sharp, witty, imaginative, complex, and wildly funny. Forward, written by Henry Nash Smith, is dated March 1962. from the forward, p. viii: "The book is now presented as DeVoto edited it in 1939, with only one or two minor changes in his editorial comments to take account of subsequent events." from the forward, p. ix: "Mrs. Bernard DeVoto has kindly given her consent to the publication fo what is in a double sense a posthumous work."