To Orion Clemens
4 April 1871 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00598)

Elmira, Apl 4.

Dear Bro:

In moving from Buffalo here I have lost certain notes & documents—among them the what you wrote for me about the difficulties of g opening up the Territorial government in Nevada & getting the machinery to running. And now, just at the moment that I want it, it is gone. I don’t even know what it was you wrote, for I did not intend to read it until I was ready to use it. Do Have you time to scribble something again, to aid my memory. Little characteristic items like Whittlesey’s refusing to allow for the knife, &c are the most illuminating things—the difficulty of getting credit for the Gov’t—& all that sort of thing. Incidents are better, any time, than dry history. Don’t tax yourself—I can make a little go a great way.1

Baby in splendid condition. Livy as feeble as ever—has not sat up [ by but ] once or twice for a week.

Ys T

Sam

Is Bliss doing anything with the MS I sent? Is he thinking of beginning on it shortly?2

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 In his 11 November 1870 letter to Orion, Clemens had acknowledged receipt of his “full Nevada notes.” The present request for details of the territorial government’s difficulties, prominently discussed in what became chapter 25 of Roughing It, indicates that Clemens was preparing to write that chapter, although much of the material intervening between it and chapters 1–11, which he had sent to Bliss on 18 March (20 Mar 71 to Bliss and OC, n. 3), was incomplete or still in draft form. As Nevada territorial secretary, Orion had had to justify expenses to obtain disbursements from Elisha Whittlesey (1783–1863), first comptroller of the Treasury Department. Whittlesey’s office disallowed the purchase of several of the sixteen pocket knives Orion had purchased out of his own salary for the members and staff of the second Territorial Legislature (RI 1993, 168–71, 619–23, 842–46).

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2 The Roughing It contract specified that the American Publishing Company agreed “to commence operations at once upon receipt of manuscript, & to push it through with all the dispatch compatible with its being well done in text & illustrations” (Book Contract for Roughing It).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L4, 372; Hill, 52, excerpt; MTLP, 62–63.

Provenance:see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

by but • byut