To Mary Mason and Abel W. Fairbanks
14 August 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: CSmH, UCCL 00332)

Buffalo, Aug 14.

Dear Mother—

Before either your letter or that of Mr. Fairbanks arrived, I had received a proposition from one of the owners of the Buffalo Express who had taken a sudden notion to sell, & I have been busy in the matter ever since—always intending to write to both of you, & always writing to Livy instead.1 I had but little trouble in coming to an understanding with the Buffalo man, but then the bore of wading through the books & getting up balance sheets; & the other bore of taking a tedious invoice, & getting everything intelligible & ship-shape & according to the canons of business, were the things that made the delay. As soon as Mr. Langdon saw the books of the concern he was satisfied.

I was satisfied before. I was not particular whether it made [more] or less money than the Herald, not being as covetous now as I was when I was a young man, but I was growing particular about the s routine of duties I was going to launch myself into for life. The more I thought of trying to transform myself into a political editor, the more incongruous & the more [hazardous] the thing looked. I always did hate politics, & the prospect of becoming its servant at last, & especially when there was no necessity for doing it, was anything but attractive. It just offered another apprenticeship—another one, to be tacked on to the tail end of a foolish life made up of apprenticeships. I believe I have been [apprentice] to pretty much everything—& just as I was about to graduate as a journeyman I ‸always‸ had to go apprentice to something else. No sir, I said, I’ll prostitute my talents to something else. I am capable of slaving over an editorial desk without rest from noon till Midnight, & keep it up without losing a day for 3 years on a stretch, as I am [abundantly] able to prove, but I am sure it is has to be [ at agreeable] work. I shall have to work hard in this Express office, & do a little of everything—but we have a political editor,2 & so I need never write any politics unless I want to—& I am just exactly as likely to [want to as] you are to want to write slang & profanity. My Your aversion to the latter is no stronger than mine to the former. I was astonished—& disheartened, too—when Mr. Fairbanks proposed it—& many a pleasant dream vanished away in that moment—but still, for the sake of being with you & on the Herald, I was ready to accept the issue. The Express proposition just arrived in time to [ k ] stop me from going to Cleveland to be a politician. Well—I don’t know—I don’t know—under your just & firm guidance I might have succeeded—but [ I ] would I ever have felt at home & fitted to my place? Might not doubts, & questionings, & possibly regrets, have come when it was too late? One cannot teach an old dog new tricks, & I guess it has fallen out mainly as Providence intended it should. But although we are to remain separate in property & person mother, I hope we shall [ dis◇◇ no ] suffer no separation in love—& I neither fear it or expect it.

I am writing this letter to you & Mr Fairbanks both, because I owe him one & you must write read this to him instead. We came very near being associated in business together, & I went home mighty sorry about that $62,500 raise.

Livy & I are to be married the last of December or the first week in January—& therefore I have canceled all of next winter’s lecture engagements. We shall come here & go to housekeeping at once.

We got up a nice surprise for you at Niagara, & lo & behold you wasn’t there. What kind of conduct is those? You said you would be there with Charley.3 Ida was already there, & Charley went, & our entire tribe, including Dr & Mrs. Sayles—& we had just got comfortably housed there in our hotel when Mrs Brooks & her entire tribe happened in from New York & surprised us. We meant to stay several days, but we only staid two or three.4 We hunted high & low for you, & in both hemispheres—under the American Eagle & likewise the Canadian lion. But you were not. You were like Rachel’s children—they were not. She refused to be comforted. Such was our gait.5

But this will never do. It is bedtime. My cordial love to all the family & my benison upon thee, & upon thy house, & upon all thy possessions what‸soever.‸ ever.

Lovingly Yr Son

Samℓ.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Abel Fairbanks’s letter of 27 July survives in the Mark Twain Papers (see 1 Aug 69 to Bliss, n. 2, for a partial transcription). Mrs. Fairbanks’s letter has not been found.

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2 Josephus Nelson Larned (1836–1913), both political editor and editor in chief of the Buffalo Express in 1869. Born in Chatham, Ontario, Larned was educated in the public schools of Buffalo and, after working as a bookkeeper and then a clerk, got his first newspaper job at the Buffalo Republic in 1857. Two years later he joined the staff of the Express, becoming associate editor in 1860 and part owner in 1866. After leaving the paper in 1872, Larned served as Buffalo superintendent of education, was responsible for the development of what became the local public library, was active in several civic organizations, and wrote a number of well-regarded histories and history textbooks. He and Clemens remained lifelong friends. Among the other staff members of the Express when Clemens took possession were: Chester A. Wilcox, city editor; Francis Wardell, circulation manager; and Wardell’s nephew, James (Jimmie) Brennan, office boy (Olmsted, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 15–17, 19–21, 28; Frank H. Severance, 224; Berry; Buffalo Directory, 486, 495; “Twain Success Puzzle to His Old Office Boy,” Buffalo Courier-Express, 24 Feb 1929, sec. S, 8).

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3 Fourteen-year-old Charles Mason Fairbanks.

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4 The visit to Niagara Falls probably occupied the last three days in July. The sole documentary evidence for those dates is found in the record of the cash account Charles Langdon kept for Clemens: a 1 August charge (most likely made at the end of the trip) of $15.40 for “Expenses at Niagara,” broken down into “Hotel Bill 10.50” and “Fare to Elmira 4.90” (“Samℓ. L. Clemens Esq In acc with C. J. Langdon,” statement dated “Elmira Aug 9th 1869,” CU-MARK). Joining Clemens and the Langdon family were: Ida Clark, Charles Langdon’s fiancée, perhaps accompanied by her parents, Jefferson B. and Julia Clark; Elmira neighbors Dr. and Mrs. Henry Sayles; and Fidele Brooks of New York City, whose party most likely included her husband, son, and sister—Henry Brooks, Remsen G. Brooks, and Josephine Griffiths Polhemus. Jervis Langdon probably combined his visit to the falls with an inspection of the Buffalo Express’s financial records in nearby Buffalo. The Niagara excursion provided Clemens with material for his first two Saturday contributions to the Express: “A Day at Niagara” and “English Festivities. And Minor Matters” (SLC 1869 [MT00782], 1869 [MT00796]), which he later revised into a single sketch, “Niagara,” and collected in Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (1875).

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5 “Thus saith the Lord; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not” (Jeremiah 31:15).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (CSmH, call no. HM 14253)

Previous publication: L3, 298–300; MTMF 103–5.

Provenance:see Huntington Library, pp. 582–83.

Emendations and textual notes:

more • mor[] [torn]

hazardous • haz[] |ardous [torn]

apprentice • [a]pprentice [torn]

abundantly • abundablntly [canceled ‘l’ partly formed]

at agreeable • atgreeable [‘t’ partly formed; possibly ‘b’]

want to as • wantt to as [false start]

k • [partly formed]

I • [partly formed]

dis◇◇ no • [heavily canceled; possibly ‘disco no’]