1 Clemens’s letter was printed as part of a 7 December New York Tribune story, “The Missouri Disaster,” under the subheading “Mark Twain on Launching Ships’ Boats,” with the Tribune’s preface: “Mr. Mark Twain, in a private letter which we venture to publish below, incloses the following extract from a Tribune editorial on the Missouri disaster, and adds the appended comment” (7 Dec 72, 5; for the enclosed “extract” see note 5). Whitelaw Reid had become managing editor of the newspaper, under Horace Greeley, in mid-1869, and Clemens had since maintained a friendly relationship with him, benefiting from his willingness to publish Clemens’s letters to the editor on topical subjects of his own choice. In addition, Reid had often made complimentary mention on the editorial page of Clemens, who undoubtedly found such endorsement from the country’s most prestigious daily newspaper very gratifying. Since May 1872 Reid had acted as editor in chief of the newspaper, with John Hay as his second in command, freeing Greeley to pursue his campaign for the presidency. Defeated on 5 November, Greeley resumed the editorship, but fell ill almost immediately with inflammation of the brain and died on 29 November, precipitating a fight for control of the newspaper which Clemens would follow closely. Reid was the editorial heir apparent, but owned virtually no stock in the paper and lacked the financial means to buy enough of a share to secure his position. The crisis was not resolved until 23 December (see 10 Dec 72 to Nast, n. 4, and pp. 261–62; L3, 265 n. 1; L4, 227–29, 270–72, 288–93, 382–86, 417–18; Baehr, 105–16, 119–22; Vogelback 1954, 374–77; New York Tribune: “A Card,” 15 May 72, 4; “Re-election of Grant,” 6 Nov 72, 1; “A Card,” 7 Nov 72, 4; “Mr. Greeley’s Last Hours,” 30 Nov 72, 1).

2 On 22 October 1872 the steamer Missouri, traveling from New York to Havana, burned at sea during a gale. Only one of its lifeboats was successfully launched, and of the eighty-nine passengers and crew on board, only sixteen survived. In early December, a court of inquiry found that “the Missouri was not provided with a sufficient number of boats, and such boats as she had were so secured as to be found difficult to be lowered,” and that “on the alarm of fire all was confusion; that there was no discipline, no organization, or combined effort to save life; that each man acted independently to save his own life, and that no attempt was made to save the life of the female passengers” (New York Tribune: “The Missouri Disaster,” 5 Dec 72, 2; “Horrors of Travel,” 31 Oct 72, 1; “The Burning of the Missouri,” 1 Nov 72, 1; “A Voice from the Sea,” 5 Dec 72, 4).

3 Strictly speaking, the steamboat “stage” was a “hanging gangplank for reaching from boat to shore,” not an independently maneuverable raft (Bates, 119). But seamen used “floating stages, and stages suspended by the side of a ship, for calking and repairing” (Whitney and Smith, 5:5887; CU-NEWS, 267).

4 To “express oneself with care and nicety” (OED, 2:888), as, for example, in Hamlet: “We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us” (act 5, scene 1).

5 The actual enclosure, a clipping of part of an editorial in the Tribune of 5 December entitled “A Voice from the Sea” (4), has not survived. Its text is reproduced here in a line-for-line transcription. The Tribune reprinted the clipping, with only trivial differences, along with the present letter.