To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
15 February 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00576)

Buffalo, Feb. 15/71.

Friend Bliss—

This is to acknowledge receipt of your check for $1,452.62—copyright on sales of Innocents Abroad for quarter ending Jan. 31. The sales keep up amazingly.1

Riley sailed finally from London Feb. 1. It is a thirty-day voyage. We I must have & will have [ T ]He had plenty of company—every ship goes full. He sends me London papers which reveal to me that we are all asleep over here. But I’ll see But that is all the better for me. I mean to print nothing — beforehand, but let the book be a booming surprise.2

Tell Orion that we cannot tell what the result is going to be. Sometimes I have hope for my wife,—so I have at this moment—but most of the time it seems to me impossible that she can get well. I cannot go into particulars—the subject is too dreadful. I thank him & Mollie for their kind offers.3

Ys

Clemens

[letter docketed:] [and in ink:] Mark Twain | Feb 15/71

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The check, sent by Frank Bliss on 13 February (letter and statement in CU-MARK), was for royalties on sales of 8,024 copies during the sixth quarter (1 Nov 70–31 Jan 71), an improvement over the fifth quarter, but not as good as the fourth (5 Aug 70 to Bliss, n. 1; 7 Nov 70 to Bliss, n. 1).

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2 Riley had left New York for Liverpool on 7 January on the City of Brussels. He wrote on 22 January from London that he planned to sail on the Gambia on 1 February and arrive in Natal, on Africa’s east coast, in “30 to 35 days” (CU-MARK). But the Gambia did not depart English coastal waters until 11 February and after a difficult fifty-day voyage, Riley disembarked early in Cape Town, on the west coast, on 23 March. He noted in his “Memoranda”: “Your correspondent wouldn’t take repeat (with the risks) another such a voyage at sea for one hundred thousand dollars” (Riley, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18; advertisement for Gambia, London Times, 1 Feb 71, 2). The “London papers” do not survive, but presumably were clippings describing the South African diamond discoveries and the rush to the fields.

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3 No letters offering assistance are known to survive.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L4, 331–332; MTLP, 55–56.

Provenance:see Mendoza Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

T • [partly formed]