1 Not extant.

2 After learning from Mary Mason Fairbanks in March that her son was an “ardent admirer” of Nast’s, Clemens had evidently written to Nast on his behalf (2? Mar 72 to Fairbanks, nn. 2, 3). Nast again replied graciously to this second plea (17 Dec 72 to Nast, n. 1).

3 Ecclesiastes 11:1.

4 In May 1872 Horace Greeley was nominated to run for president on the Liberal Republican ticket against Republican incumbent Ulysses S. Grant; in July he was endorsed by the Democratic party, whose policies he had long denounced. Nast took every opportunity to satirize Greeley’s personal eccentricity and political waywardness in his Harper’s Weekly cartoons, waging a “Campaign of Caricature” that was largely instrumental in securing Grant a second term in the 5 November election (Paine 1904, 220, 227–29, 235–39, 241–42, 246–64). Although Clemens’s remarks here clearly show his support of the Republican party and Grant, he avoided expressing his views in print during the campaign. He did, however, publish an anonymous humorous sketch in the Hartford Courant of 20 July—“The Secret of Dr. Livingstone’s Continued Voluntary Exile”—which concluded with a jibe at Greeley’s turncoat politics. In the sketch, the newly discovered Livingstone is given a summary of the news of the preceding five years, and decides to remain in Africa upon learning, to his disgust, that “Greeley is the democratic candidate for President of the United States, and all rebeldom hurrahs for him” (SLC 1872). Charles Dudley Warner gleefully accepted Clemens’s contribution, writing him on 19 July: “Thank you for that jolly drive on Horace. It’s first chop and will be printed tomorrow” (CU-MARK).