To Louis Prang and Company
9 February 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: MoKHC, UCCL 00573)

Buffalo, Feb. 8 9.

L. Prang & Co
Gentlemen:

The chromo came, & I did not notify you because I hoped to get time to write & print a notice, but no time ever comes to me . , except By all odds it is the pleasantest & happiest & truest picture I have seen for many a day. It holds the place of honor in my study.1

This is all in haste. I am simply out of the sick room for a moment’s rest & respite. My wife’s life (a year & 7 days married) is only hanging by a thread. ‸wife is seriously & I am afraid even dangerously ill.‸ 2 You will excuse my long delay in responding to your kind compliment.

Yrs Truly

[ Sa ] Mark Twain

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 The chromolithograph perhaps was one of Prang and Company’s “latest publications”—“Mt. Chocorua” and “North Conway Meadows,” reproduced from paintings by Benjamin Champney (1817–1907), a well-known landscapist (advertisement, Every Saturday, n.s., 2 [4 Feb 71]: 112). The present endorsement was Clemens’s substitute for the contemplated notice.

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2 With typhoid fever, probably diagnosed already although not identified in Clemens’s extant letters for nearly two weeks (22 Feb 71 to Reid). The disease had taken Emma Nye’s life in September 1870.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which is in the collection of Hallmark Cards, Kansas City (MoKHC).

Previous publication: L4, 329–330.

Emendations and textual notes:

Sa • [possibly ‘Sam’; ‘m’ partly formed]