1 Clemens had purchased a ream of stationery—ten quires each of two types, with matching envelopes—from the Boston stationers Lowell and Brett at a cost of $42.50. The paper was paid for on delivery at the Hartford house on 24 July (Lowell and Brett receipted invoice dated 24 July 72, CU-MARK). The present letter has been dated conjecturally within two or three days of the delivery. The gray stationery, first found in Clemens’s letter of 2 August to Mollie, has a grid pattern, and is engraved with an ornate “SLC” monogram; the matching envelope bears Lowell and Brett’s embossment. This is the first personal monogram found in Clemens’s letters, and it may have been his own design: a scrap of paper preserved in the Mark Twain Papers has his outline drawing of the monogram. The white stationery has the same monogram rendered in three colors. Both stationeries were used frequently from August through December 1872, and occasionally in early 1873. See the illustration on the next page.

Monogram design in Clemens’s hand, and the monogram printed on graph-lined stationery. Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library (CU-MARK).