To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
4 July 1870 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: Daley, UCCL 00486)

Elmira, July 4.

Friend Bliss:

Mr Langdon is ever so much better, & we have every reason to believe that he is going to get well, & that speedily.

I fancy the book you speak of must be the Appleton book.1 I cannot think of any other, & have no knowledge of any other. But I shall probably never have to do the Appleton book. They asked me to name a price. I named a pretty stiff one. And at the same time, I said that if it were a subscription book I could afford easier terms. They misunderstood me and thought that I was suggesting that it be made a subscription work—& so they accepted the idea my suggestion and offered higher pay than I [spoke. ] of. But I wrote them immediately that they had misconstrued me, & that I could not do a subscription book for them at any price whatever. And moreover, that I could n do nothing more than the original proposition called for. And that I could not even do that unless I could do it either before or immediately after my Adirondack trip. They have had two or ample [ to time ] to have written me half a dozen times since, & haven’t done it. Therefore it is far from likely that any “humorous book” is will issue from my pen shortly.

If Mr L. gets thoroughly well, in time, my wife & I will go straight from Buffalo to Vergennes, Vt., [ the ] at the end of July, & be joined there by the Twichells. It is our shortest & straightest route to the woods.

We shall be here 10 days or 2 weeks yet. Come—come either here or to Buf.2

Yrs

Mark.

[letter docketed:] [and] Mark Twain | July 4/70 [and] Elmira—N.Y.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Bliss’s letter is not known to survive. Clemens never published a book with Appleton and Company (20 May 70 to Bliss; 23–26 June 70 to Appleton and Company).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 For more than two months Clemens had been expecting Bliss to come “talk books & business” (23 Apr 70 to Bliss).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, collection of Robert Daley until 1993.

Previous publication: L4, 161–162; LLMT, 153, brief quotation; MTLP, 36.

Provenance:The MS evidently remained among the American Publishing Company’s files until it was sold (and may have been at that time copied by Dana Ayer; see Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance). The Ayer transcription was in turn copied by a typist and both the handwritten and typed transcriptions are at WU. Sold in 1993 to an unidentified purchaser (Sotheby 1993, lot 216).

Emendations and textual notes:

spoke. • [deletion implied]

to time • toime

the • [‘e’ partly formed]