To Elisha Bliss, Jr., and Orion Clemens
20 March 1871 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00595)

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Elmira, 20th.

Friend Bliss:

We are all [ hear here,] & my wife has grown weak, stopped eating, & dropped back to where she was two weeks ago. But we’ve all the help we want here.

Here is my contribution (I take it from the book,) & by all odds it is the finest piece of writing I ever did. Consequently I want the people to know that it is from the book:

Head it thus, & go on:

The Old-Time Pony-Express
of the Great Plains.

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{Having but little time to write volunteer contributions, now I offer this in chapter from

By Mark Twain.

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{The following is a chapter from Mark Twain’s forthcoming book & closes with a life-like picture of an incident of Overland stage travel on the Plains in the days before the Pacific railroad was built.——{ Ed. Publisher.

{From along about the 160th to 170th page of the MS.} It begins thus:

“However, in a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks & watching for the pony-rider” &c.—Go on to end of chapter.3

Refer the marginal note to Orion, about postage. But I I feel sure I am wrong, & that it was Four Dollars an ounce instead of Two——make the correction, if necessary4 Read proof very carefully, Orion—you need send none to me.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The story of George Bemis’s treeing by a ”wounded buffalo bull” ultimately began chapter 7 of Roughing It. In the printer’s copy manuscript, it must have made up the first half of chapter 8, immediately preceding the pony express incident (see note 3; RI 1993, 42, 576, 840).

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2 Almost certainly on 18 March, the day the family left Buffalo for Elmira, Clemens sent not only the eight chapters of manuscript (168 pages) for which he had made a security copy, but the following three, altogether comprising about 258 pages, or what was then chapters 1–11 (RI 1993, 837–40). He had expected to send at least the first eight chapters on 15 March (9 Mar 71, 11 and 13 Mar 71, both to OC; 17 Mar 71 to Bliss).

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3 Having already sent the printer’s copy manuscript of what then constituted the first eleven chapters of Roughing It, Clemens must have enclosed his securitycopy of the pony express incident with this letter. The chapter divisions in the printer’s copy manuscript were different from those of the published book, however, and the incident, which makes up the first half of chapter 8 as published, was evidently the last half of chapter 8 in the manuscript, as this letter implies. Clemens must have drawn the text he so accurately quotes from his security copy, but he could only approximate the page numbers of the original, since the copy did not reproduce them (RI 1993, 839–40). The American Publisher used Clemens’s title and byline but modified his editorial note (all shown here as Clemens marked them for the printer) to read “[The author sends us for this issue the following from his forthcoming book, being a life-like picture of an incident of Overland stage-travel on the Plains, in the days before the Pacific Railroad was built.—Ed. Publisher.]” (SLC 1871).

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4 The marginal note must have been on one of the enclosed pages of the security copy manuscript. The American Publisher text retains Clemens’s original reading that the express rider’s “literary freight was worth two dollars an ounce,” but chapter 8 of the first edition of Roughing It reads “five dollars a letter,” the result of Orion’s correction (SLC 1871, SLC 1872, 71). Clemens’s original figure was correct. Although the fee had initially been set at five dollars per half ounce, plus ten cents postage, when the pony express service began in April 1860, it had dropped to four dollars per ounce by July 1861. By late July, when the Clemens brothers began their journey across country by stage, it had been further reduced to two dollars an ounce (RI 1993, 582–83, 936).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L4, 367–369; Hill, 52, brief excerpts; MTLP, 61–62.

Provenance:see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

hear here • hearre