1 The manuscript of the next letter, a “duplicate” of this one, shows that the date was probably 19 February. It is not known whether this letter ever reached Burlingame; its provenance and current location are likewise unknown.

2 In June 1866 in Honolulu, Burlingame (1820–70), who had been “envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary from the United States to China” since 1861, met and befriended Clemens, inviting him to come and stay with him in Peking. Burlingame resigned as minister in November 1867, and thereupon accepted a post offered him by the emperor of China as “envoy on behalf of the Chinese government to all the treaty powers,” charged with visiting these nations in order to express China’s “sincere desire to be friendly and progressive” and to discuss its position on renewal or revision of treaties in effect since 1858 (SLC to JLC and PAM, 27 June 66, L1, 347–48; Burlingame to William H. Seward, 21 Nov 67 and 14 Dec 67, Congress, 1:493–94; S. Wells Williams to Seward, 23 Dec 67, Congress, 1:495–96). At the time of this letter, which Clemens probably directed to San Francisco, Burlingame was about to leave Hong Kong on his way to Washington (via San Francisco), the first stop on his tour of the capitals of western nations, which was to include (among others) London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg (“Arrival of the ‘China’ from China and Japan,” San Francisco Alta California, 1 Apr 68, 1). Clemens did not accompany or later join Burlingame; he did, however, publish an article in the New York Tribune about the Chinese mission (SLC 1868). Burlingame died of pneumonia in Russia in 1870, on the verge of completing his diplomatic assignment.

3 See 24 Jan 68 to JLC and PAM, n. 4.

4 Burlingame married Jane Cornelia Livermore in June 1847. Their son, Edward Livermore Burlingame (1848–1922), left Harvard College in his first year and accompanied his father as a secretary upon the latter’s return to China in the summer of 1866, when Clemens met both of them in Honolulu. Clemens later recalled Edward as “a handsome boy of nineteen, and overflowing with animation, activity, energy, and the pure joy of being alive” (AD, 20 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:125).