To T. B. Pugh
21 December 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: Daley, UCCL 00413)

Hartford, Dec. 21.

My Dear Pugh:1

It is too far in the future—but I couldn’t go, anyway. I could not deliver a detached lecture without losing a thousand dollars by it. That is, when I am at work. I go to St Louis & New Orleans in February or March, & I do not know how long I shall be gone. It is a pleasure trip & no limitations. I am at work now, & I shall be at work when I get back;2 & under those circumstances if you offered me two thousand dollars to break in upon my work, go to Phila & talk & then lose ten days getting back into my working groove again, ‸(which is always the case)‸ I would be obliged to say there was no money in it, but simply an actual loss, instead, & I could not do it.

But you’ll have guns enough, & big enough ones, too, without my little artillery, & so in [ whis ] wishing you a big success & a dazzling exit, I am only prophecying—& that on a certainty, too.3

Ys Ever

S. L. Clemens

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Thomas B. Pugh managed the Star Course of lectures in Philadelphia. Clemens had lectured for him in December 1869 and again in November 1871. On the latter occasion Pugh paid $250, one of Clemens’s highest fees (see 23 Feb 74 to Redpath [2nd], n. 1; L3, 415; L4, 134–35 n. 2).

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2 On The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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3 The event Pugh was planning has not been identified. Although Clemens’s wording seems to suggest it was a retirement event, Pugh was in his fifteenth year of managing the Star Course when he died in 1884, at age 55 (L4, 239–40 n. 1).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, collection of Robert Daley, seen at Sotheby’s, New York City, while awaiting sale (Sotheby 1993).

Previous publication: L6, 327–328; AAA/Anderson 1938, lot 57, excerpts; Parke-Bernet 1941, lot 104, excerpts; Sotheby 1993, lot 254, excerpts and paraphrase.

Provenance:When offered for sale in 1938 the MS was part of the collection of Alfred C. Meyer. Daley sold it in December 1993 to an unknown purchaser.

Emendations and textual notes:

whis • [‘s’ partly formed]