c
472 Delaware st.
Buffalo, Sep. 7
Click to add citation to My Citations.
Dear Miss Wolcott—
It always hurts me to the heart to say no to an application from a writer struggling upward.1 Every few days such applications come, & then I have to sit down & write the same old, old, hard sentences—not always, for once or twice I have succeeded in lo finding a place for a candidate. But now I have no resources. My own paper has all the expense of a literary kind that it can bear—so one of my partners tells me, (in whose hands rests the entire power to hire literary assistance[)].2 I say “no resources.” It amounts to that, for I shall forward the poems to the “Galaxy,” & in with a request that they buy open negotiations with you for such for publication—in and in due time will come polite thanks & excuses, but no trade. Possibly not—& let us hope not—but such is my usual experience, & it is by the lamp of experience that we customarily walk.3
Do not speak to me of “boring”—for when one applies to me in behalf of one possessing real & manifest talent, then I am complimented, not bored. And even an application from a plain & painfully talentless source creates more of sorrow than anger in the recipient, more of pity than of ridicule—for there is somesthing so pathetic in the simplicity of it all, & the author’s cheery readin eagerness to step out upon the wide desert that in whose far centre sits the shining Damascus of success.
Poor little Emma Nye lies in our bed-chamber fighting wordy battles with the phantoms of delirium. Livy & a hired nurse watch her without [ceasing, ] —night & day. It is not necessary to tell you that Livy sleeps as little as nurse or patient, & sees little but that bed & its occupant. The disease is a consuming fever—of a typhoid [ tu type]—& also the lungs seem stricken with disease. The poor girl is dangerously ill. W Ours is an excellent physician, & we have full confidence in him.4
With great respect— I am
Very Truly Yrs,
Samℓ. L. Clemens.
Miss Ella Wolcott | Care H. B. Hooker, Esq | Rochester, N. Y.5 [postmarked:] buffalo n.y. sep 8 [and] carrier sep 8
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
I am greatly interested in a young man whom I do not know, but whose
friends think him a “right good
fellow”—& these friends are
“right good fellows” to me. Frank Huntington
is traveling and studying in Germany on slender resources, and would
be glad to prolong his stay by writing for the press. I have copied
these verses from his letters home, and beg to know if you can find
place for any of them, either in The Galaxy or your own paper, also
whether any letters might be available now, when all the world is
talking of Germany. If rejected please return me the
manuscripts. The following verses were among those Wolcott sent (the
ellipses are hers):
This land of ours, this America here, It wouldn’t be such a very poor
land, If its equal rights gabbling citisens Would only come to understand — — —
— — — — That lately the world has been found to be
round
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
Ella Louisa Wolcott (b. 1828) was a friend of the Langdons’
and like them a member of Congregational Church (Wolcott, 390; Park Church,
6–9). On 5 September she had written Clemens (CU-MARK):
Click to add citation to My Citations. 3
The Galaxy did not publish any poetry by
Huntington (1848–1928), who later became a writer and editor
and from 1874 to 1902 was on the staff of Appletons’ Annual Cyclopædia,
contributing articles on international political, military, and
commercial history.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 4
Possibly Andrew R. Wright (11 Nov 70 to Ford, n. 5).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 5
Horace B. Hooker, a nurseryman, had his home and business at 255 North
St. Paul Street in Rochester (Rochester
Directory, 108, 261).
Source text(s):MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley (CU-MARK).
Previous publication:
L4, 190–192.
Provenance:purchased June 1973.
Emendations and textual notes:
ceasing, • [deletion implied]
tu type • tuype
