To
Orion and Mary E. (Mollie) Clemens
13 and 14 August 1864 • San Francisco, Calif.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00085)
My Dear Bro & Sister:
I have managed to write another valuable letter to Ma, as follows:
“My Dear Mother—You have portrayed to me so often & so earnestly the benefit of taking frequent exercise, that I know it will please you to learn that I belong to the San F. Olympic Club, whose gymnasium is one of the largest & best appointed in the United States. I am glad, now, that you put me in the notion of it, Ma, because if you had not, I never would have thought of it myself. I think it nothing but right to give you the whole credit of it. It has been a great blessing to me. I feel like a new man. I sleep better, I have a healthier appetite, my intellect is clearer, & I have become so strong & hearty that I fully believe twenty years have been added to my life. I feel as if I ought to be very well satisfied with this result, when I reflect that I never was in that gymnasium but once in my life, & that was over three months ago.”
How’s that? I think I can see the old lady pluming herself as she reads the first page [ a ] aloud, & perhaps commenting to the auditory (they generally make my private letters pretty public at home,): “Thar, now, I always told Sam it would be so, & in those very [ wort words], I expect, but he was so headstrong he never would listen to me before; I guess he’s found out that I know some things worth knowing.” Oh, no—I guess she won’t snort, though, when she turns the page over, it ain’t likely.2 It takes me to make her life interesting to her. I wonder why she never inquired about the sequel to that mystery wherein the fellow was going to blow the young woman’s head off with a double-barreled [shotgun ]through the back window?3 I guess she was [ruther ]down on that little novelette. She never encouraged me to go on with it.
I have got Dr Bellows stuck after my local items.4 He says he never fails to read [them.—]said he [went into ]“convulsions of laughter” over the account of “What a Sky-Rocket Did.” He told me he would consider me a benefactor to him if I would publish a book. I itched to tell him an anecdote about that [sky-rocket ]article, but I didn’t dare to. Somebody showed it to an old fellow down at San José, who is perfectly impervious to humor, just to see what he would say. He takes everything he finds in a newspaper in dead earnest. He read the article ‸ [(it ]was published day before yesterday—Friday,‸ with oppressive solemnity until he came to where the neighbors were expecting the fellow that went up with the rocket, & moved their families out of his way, & then he slammed the paper on the floor & rose up & [ co angrily ]confronted the man—& says [he, : “W with ] bitter measureless scorn in his tones: “Was expect’n of him down! They druther he’d fall in the alley! Moved ther families out to give him a show! Now look-a-here, my friend, you may go on & believe that, if you think you can stand it, but you’ll excuse me. I just think it’s a God dam lie!”
I enclose the Hale & Norcross stock. It is all in your name, you see, so if I want to leave here at any time, there’ll be no bother about it. Put it in the safe, & if I get a chance to sell it well, endorse it & send it to me.5
Yr Bro,
Sam
I [wouldn’t ]have had Ma & Pamela publish that letter of mine for a thousand dollars—but I shan’t say anything now to make them feel bad about it.6
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
The Hale & Norcross officers decide to sink a shaft. They
levy forty thousand dollars. Next month they have a mighty good
notion to go lower, and they levy a twenty thousand dollar
assessment. Next month, the novelty of sinking the shaft has about
worn off, and they think it would be nice to drift a
while—twenty thousand dollars. The following month it
occurs to them it would be so funny to pump a little—and
they buy a forty thousand dollar pump. Thus it goes on for months
and months, but the Hale & Norcross sends us no bullion,
though most of the time there is an encouraging rumor afloat that
they are “right in the casing!”
(“What Goes with the Money?” ET&S2, 455) Despite his present claim to have transferred all of his Hale and
Norcross holdings to Orion, Clemens still had two shares in his own name
in May 1865 (see 11 Nov 64 to OC, n. 5).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L1, 307–309.
Provenance:probably Moffett Collection; see p. 462.
Emendations and textual notes:
12 13 • 132 [‘2’ mended to ‘3’]
a • alod w a [‘d’ over ‘w’ or possibly ‘u’; ‘a’ may have been canceled because it was too close to the canceled miswriting for legibility]
wort words • wortds [‘d’ over partly formed ‘t’]
shotgun • [possibly ‘shot gun’]
ruther • [sic]
them.— • [dash over period]
went into • wenti into [false start]
sky-rocket • shky-rocket [‘k’ over possible ‘h’]
(it • [no closing parenthesis]
co angrily • [‘an’ over possible ‘co’]
he, : “W with • [‘w’ over colon; open quotation marks and a partly formed character, probably ‘W’, canceled. Clemens probably meant to cancel all three marks at once by writing over them but had to cancel the quotation marks and the partly formed character separately when ‘with’ fit below them without touching them.]
wouldn’t • wouldtn’t [‘n’ over partly formed ‘t’]
