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Elmira, Apl 4.
Dear Bro:
In moving from Buffalo here I have lost certain notes
& documents—among them the what you wrote for
me about the difficulties of g opening up the Territorial government
in Nevada & getting the machinery to running. And now, just at the
moment that I want it, it is gone. I don’t even know what it was you
wrote, for I did not intend to read it until I was ready to use it.
Do Have you time to scribble something again, to aid my memory.
Little characteristic items like Whittlesey’s refusing to allow for
the knife, &c are the most illuminating things—the
difficulty of getting credit for the Gov’t—&
all that sort of thing. Incidents are better, any time, than dry history.
Don’t tax yourself—I can make a little go a great
way.1
Baby in splendid condition. Livy as feeble as
ever—has not sat up [
by but ] once or twice for a week.
Ys T
Sam
Is Bliss doing anything with the MS I sent? Is he thinking of
beginning on it shortly?2
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1
In his 11 November 1870 letter to Orion, Clemens had acknowledged receipt
of his “full Nevada notes.” The present request
for details of the territorial government’s difficulties,
prominently discussed in what became chapter 25 of
Roughing It, indicates that Clemens was preparing to write
that chapter, although much of the material intervening between it and
chapters 1–11, which he had sent to Bliss on 18 March (
20 Mar
71 to Bliss and OC, n. 3), was incomplete or still in draft
form. As Nevada territorial secretary, Orion had had to justify expenses
to obtain disbursements from Elisha Whittlesey (1783–1863),
first comptroller of the Treasury Department. Whittlesey’s
office disallowed the purchase of several of the sixteen pocket knives
Orion had purchased out of his own salary for the members and staff of
the second Territorial Legislature (
RI 1993, 168–71, 619–23, 842–46).
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2
The
Roughing It contract specified that the
American Publishing Company agreed “to commence
operations at once upon receipt of manuscript, & to push
it through with all the dispatch compatible with its being well done
in text & illustrations” (
Book Contract
for Roughing It).
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Source text(s):
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley (
CU-MARK).
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Previous publication:
L4, 372; Hill, 52, excerpt; MTLP, 62–63.
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Provenance:
see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
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Emendations and textual notes:
by but •
byut