To George E. Barnes
21 September 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS facsimile: MHi, UCCL 00354)

Buffalo, Sept. 21.

Friend Barnes:1

I have been absent [so several]days, but I am ready to say I wish you well, now. Now I could have sent you our weekly paper at a dollar & a half a year—but did you ever know me to do anything mean? No, sir. I told them to send you the daily, which will cost ten dollars a year in greenbacks.2 See the confidence I repose in you! Put [o] us in the Schedule in Bankruptcy. Nothing would afford me such high gratification as to seem to have credit enough to procure me a place among that honored class who are able to contract debts.

I hope to get out there some day & go with you & Mr. Swain’s folks to another pic-nic again. We had a deal of fun, that time, without the fatigue of traveling.3

May I introduce a couple of friends of mine—Prof. Ford & Chas. J. Langdon? They are on a leisurely voyage around the world,4 & will sail for China in November. I’ll give them a note to you. Langdon is to be my brother-in-law, & is of course a very particular friend.

Cordially,

Mark Twain

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 George Eustace Barnes (d. 1897) was the editor and co-owner of the San Francisco Morning Call who had hired and, without acrimony, fired Clemens as a local reporter in 1864 (L1, 317–18 n. 3; CofC, 9–10, 15, 283).

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2 In 1864 a greenback in San Francisco had been worth less than half its face value in gold. Clemens had addressed this inequity more than once in the columns of the Morning Call, a fact he expected Barnes to remember (L1, 314 n. 4; CofC, 227–31). Federal legislation enacted in March 1869 called for an early redemption of the notes in coin, but it was a decade before the gold standard was resumed. Meanwhile, the greenback continued to be a devalued currency: in September 1869 a one-dollar greenback was worth, on the average, seventy-three cents in gold (Barrett, 171, 205–28; Mitchell, 8).

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3 While living in San Francisco in the mid-1860s, Clemens had become acquainted with Robert Bunker Swain, superintendent of the local United States branch mint. The “pic-nic” with Swain, his wife, Clara, and their son, as well as Barnes, probably took place in the spring or early summer of 1868, however. The following invitation was written as early as Friday, 10 April 1868, a week after Clemens’s return to San Francisco from the East Coast, but no later than Friday, 3 July 1868, three days before he departed again (CU-MARK):

UCLC46765

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On the envelope, which was hand delivered, Clemens jotted directions to the Swains’ home at 814 Powell Street—“Bet Cal & Sac on Powell on east side—centre block—best looking house—door plate.”—and later added a reminder that the invitation was for “Sunday, 4½ PM.” In December 1868 Clemens included Swain among the character references he gave to Jervis Langdon (Langley 1867, 462; L2, 205, 234, 359).

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4 Actually they did not leave Elmira until 4 October

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, but a photocopy was provided in 1981 by the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston (MHi).

Previous publication: L3, 354–355.

Provenance:The MS, in the Dwight Papers at MHi at least until 1981, could not be located in 1989.

Emendations and textual notes:

so several • soeveral

o • [partly formed; possibly ‘a’]