Hartford, Saturday Night.
Livy dear, only let me say Good-night—that is all. Just as I expected, & just as I said in your mother’s letter, Mr. Bliss forgot to mail that letter to you, & I [ foun ] discovered the fact an hour after supper & took it & cleared out for the post office—it was raining like sixty. I grabbed a seedy old umbrella in the hall & hurried. But that umbrella appeared to go up too much & sloped the wrong way—it was like a funnel—& Livy, would you believe it, before I had walked three blocks it had conveyed more than eighteen tons of rain-water down the back of my neck. If Why, I was ringing wet. And I had my thin shoes on, & I began to soak up, you know. Barrells & barrels I soaked up—& that water rose in me, & rose in me, higher & higher, till it issued from my mouth, & then from my nose, & [ per presently ] I began to cry—part from grief & part from overflow—because I thought I was [ y ] going to be drowned, you know—& I said I was a fool to go out without a life-preserver, which Livy always told me never to do it, & now what would become of her?
Well, you know I live half way from Hooker’s to the post office, & it is six miles by the watch, & I only got there just in the nick of time to mail my letter three hours & a half before the mail closed, & I tell you I was glad, & felt smart1—& then I bought 4 new numbers of Appleton’s month Journal2 & went up town & called on Billy Gross a minute,3 & went away from there & left my Appletons,—& went down to ‸the‸ photographers & ordered a lot of pictures from the negative of the porcelain I gave you,4 & came away from there & forgot my umbrella—& then rushed back to Appletons Gross’s & got my Appleton’s—& crossed over & started home & got about 3 miles & a half & recollected the umbrella, & said “All right, never had a se[e]ming misfortune yet that wasn’t a blessing in disguise,” & so, turned & tramped back again, damp but cheerful—twice three & a half is nine miles—& got my umbrella, & started out & a fellow said, “Oh, good, it’s you, is it?—you’ve got my umbrella—funny I should find you here.” And it was funny. We had unconsciously swapped umbrellas at the post office, or up a tree, or somewhere, & here, ever so long afterward, & ever so far away, I find him standing unwittingly by his own umbrella looking at those pictures, with my old funnel in his hand. But the moment I picked his property up he recognized it—splendid umbrella, chronome magic case, chronometer balance—he paid a thousand dollars for it in Paris—& it was unquestionably by my umbrella that he had, because his what was left of his paper collar was washed down around the small of his back & he had come just in an ace of gettin being drowned before he noticed the little peculiarity of my property—& you know he had made a pass at that daguerrean shop & climbed in there just in time to save his life,—& he was wet, Livy, you better believe. He was very glad to see me. And I went away cheerful, & said “I never had a seeming misfortune yet but that wasn’t a blessing in disguise—& it holds good yet, & it was a blessing this time, too—for that other fellow.” And then I came home, you know. And since then I have written a beautiful little romance about a nigger which was stolen out of Africa which was a prince—& sold into American slavery, & discovered, 30 years afterward & purchased of his master by the American public & sent home to Timbuctoo—& it is a true roman story, too, & Rev. Trumbull told me all about it—& his father had seen this poor devil with his own eyes—& [T. ] showed me his majesty’s portrait (original) painted by Inman. And if you were here you ‸could‸ read this stirring romance, darling, & mark out all the marginal poetry—& mark out all the jokes you didn’t understand—& all the—well everything—you should mark it all out, if you wanted to, for if Livy didn’t like it nobody else should have a chance to like it5—& since then—it is just “midnight—& All’s well!”
A thousand blessings on your honored head & kisses on your precious lips, my own darling. Good-night.
Sam.
Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | New York. [postmarked:] hartford conn. may 17 [docketed by OLL:] 72nd
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Abduhl Rahhahman. Engraving by Thomas Illman of the painting by
Henry Inman. Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of
Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor,
Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN). See note 5.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L3, 236–240; Wecter 1947, 67–68; LLMT, 90–92.
Provenance:see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
Emendations and textual notes:
foun • [‘n’ partly formed]
per presently • perres-|ently
y • [partly formed]
T. • [doubtful ‘sT.’;‘s’ partly formed]
