To James Redpath
22 February 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: MH-H, UCCL 00580)

Buffalo, 22d.

Dear Redpath—

In haste—

{Mem. Washn born this day.}

They keep writing me from Cleveland to send along the next article—so let’s have it—but do find some other author than “A Retired Lecturer”—it points right at me., old boy.1

Yes, you be sure & call when you come here. Nasby was here yesterday, enormously fat & handsome. We had a pleasant talk but I couldn’t offer him the hospitalities because my wife is very seriously ill & the house full of nurses & doctors.2

Love to Fall.

In a hurry

Yrs

Mark.

[letter docketed:] [boston ]lyceum bureau. [redpath] & fall. apr 5 1871 [and] L | [rule] [and] Mark Twain | Buffalo N.Y. | Febry 22 ’71

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 See 26 Jan 71 to Fairbanks and 30 Jan 71 to Redpath.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Redpath’s letter proposing a Buffalo visit is not known to survive. Nasby (David Ross Locke) was in Buffalo to deliver a lecture entitled “In Search of the Man of Sin” on 21 February at St. James Hall, for the Buffalo chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic’s charity fund. It was he who had sent Redpath’s first article about lecturers to Clemens. Locke’s wife had been seriously ill with typhoid fever in January (“Petroleum V. Nasby, This Evening,” Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, 21 Feb 71, 3; “Lecture Course,” Buffalo Courier, 21 Feb 71, 3; 22 Jan 71 to Redpath, n. 1; Locke to SLC, 7 Jan 71, CU-MARK).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H).

Previous publication: L4, 335–336.

Provenance:bequeathed to MH in 1918 by Evert J. Wendell.

Emendations and textual notes:

boston • [ton] [badly inked]

redpath • [d] path [badly inked]