To Charles J. Langdon
20 November 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: CtHMTH, UCCL 00541)

c

Buf. 20.

Dear Bro [ Chal Charley]:

We thank you ever so much for the shoes, for the baby was about out. They are not quite high enough in the instep, but the baby is ignorant & does not know that that is a [defect]. We will keep it quiet. The first time the baby saw the shoes he said:

“Sk cull those things right over here, for I am g about tired going [barefooted ]in ‸the‸ winter time, like a you bet your life!”

I said: “My son, slang is a thing I will not permit in this house.”

And he replied:

“I do not wish to have any words with you, old man, father, but if whenever you find that the nature of my conversation is not suited to your appetite, you suppose you get up on your ear & take a walk ‘round the block.”

I cannot think h where the child got its unhappy disposition proclivity for [slang, ]for from the beginning it has been my earnest endeavor to make its speech as free from anything of that kind as my own. Sometimes in the bitterness of my heart I say, “Why did I let him run with Susie1 so much?”

Ellen’s [ moth money ]was here a week before I knew anything about it—so it is all right.2

We do want Mother to hurry & come.

With great love to you all,

Yr Bro

Sam.

We sent back the deed—did you get it?3

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Crane.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Ellen White, the Clemenses’ housekeeper and cook, had formerly been a Langdon family servant in Elmira (6 Feb 70 to Bowen, n. 5). The payment to her has not been explained.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 Langdon had enclosed two deeds in his letter of 15 November 1870 to Clemens. Both evidently pertained to “some Property on R.R. Ave. adjoining the Boot & shoe manf. of D Atwater & Co,” which Elmira grocer Delos Holden had purchased from Jervis Langdon, under a mortgage calling for payments of “$500. per annum with interest semi annually” (CU-MARK). One deed required Olivia Clemens’s signature, as one of Langdon’s heirs; the other required Clemens’s signature, as one of the executors of his estate. Neither is known to survive.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain House, Hartford (CtHMTH).

Previous publication: L4, 244–245.

Provenance:donated to CtHMTH in 1963 by Ida Langdon.

Emendations and textual notes:

Chal Charley • Chalrley

defect • defetct [‘t’ partly formed]

barefooted • bare-|footed

slang, • [possibly ‘slang.,’]

moth money • mothney [‘th’ partly formed]