Washington, Nov. 24.
Mr. Young
Dear Sir: Out of a mass of letters not yet mailed I have send you three. The letters all seem to be about alike, but I take these because one blackguards Palestine scenery, another mentions Nazareth which is a town widely known in America, the third [gently ]touches the stupid gang of scholastic asses who go browsing through the Holy Land reducing miracles to purely natural occurrences—& all three tickle my pilgrims on the raw.1 Out of the three letters perhaps your foreign editor can cull one, at any rate.2
I send the things to you in order that so that you will recollect to order that they be returned to me if not printed.
Your obliged fellow-
servant in Christ,
Sam. L. Clemens
[letter docketed:] File JRY
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
a large, smooth-faced German, with eyes of imperial
blue, and a head broad and well balanced, somewhat resembling
portraits of Bismarck. The absence of a good growth of hair gives it
the appearance of a polished egg-plant, dead ripe. His eyes are full
of language. He has frequently been mistaken for Mr. Greeley. He
compiles the “Foreign News,” and writes the
editorials on European and other foreign matters of interest. The
Professor is a great linguist, and translates thirteen different
languages with ease and facility. He has a happy faculty of catching
an unconscious nap during the composition of his editorials. ... His
slight accent betrays his Teutonic origin. (Cummings 1868, 107)
Source text(s):
Previous publication:
L2, 113–114.
Provenance:donated to DLC in 1924 by Mrs. John Russell Young
and Gordon R. Young.
Emendations and textual notes:
gently • gently gently [corrected miswriting]