To Orion Clemens
8, 9, and 10 April 1871 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00602)

Elmira, Apl. 8.

Dear Bro:

If I don’t add a postscript to this, tell Bliss to go ahead & set up the MSS & put the engravers to work.1 My copy is down at the house & I am up here at the farm, a mile & a half up a mountain, where I write every day.2

I am to the [ 6 570th ] [page] 3 & booming along. And what I am writing now is so much better than the opening chapters, or the Innocents Abroad either, that I do wish I could spare time to revamp the opening chapters, & even write some of them over again.

I will read the bull story when I go down, & see whether it will do or not. It don’t altogether suit me, but maybe I shan’t I shall alter it very little, anyway. I don’t want it to go in the same number of the paper with the pony sketch. Mind, I never want two articles of mine in the same number. Put it in the next if you choose.

Ys

Sam.

We carried Livy to the barouche, today, & she rode around the block twice.

Tell Bliss to hatch up lots of pictures for the book—it is going to sell bully.

[P. S.]

Leave out the yarn about Jack &“Moses.” It occurs about 117th page. Stop ‸Close‸ the chapter with the‸se‸ words

“and when they tried to teach a subordinate anything that subordinate generally “got it through his head”—at least in time for the funeral.[”] 4

Accompanying this, is the bull story, altered the way I want it. Don’t put it in till about the fourth No. of the paper.

[OVER.]

Tell Bliss to go ahead setting up the book just as it is, making the corrections marked in purple ink, in some 20 or 30 pages which I shall mail [to-night. ]—possibly in this envelop.5

Ys

Sam

P. S.—Monday—Am to 610th page, now.6

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens’s anxiety to see production begin on the first eleven chapters of his western book—long before he had completed writing it—made him misspeak. Bliss’s first step would be to commission drawings from the illustrators, and only then to hire engravers to produce woodblocks.

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2 While Clemens was working at Quarry Farm, the other members of his household remained at Mrs. Jervis Langdon’s home in Elmira proper (17 Mar 71 to Bliss, n. 3).

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3 That is, about to the end of chapter 24 of Roughing It (RI 1993, 814, 842).

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4 Clemens had told this “yarn” about Quaker City passenger Jack Van Nostrand (the “‘Moses Who?’ story”) in at least three of his “American Vandal Abroad” lectures in 1868–69 (L2, 298, 299 n. 2; RI 1993, 581). He added this instruction to Orion in the evening after returning to the Langdon house, where he could reread his security copy of the first eight chapters of the manuscript. The change proposed here was not ultimately adopted in chapter 6 of Roughing It (RI 1993, 847–48).

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5 After revising (and apparently lengthening) the story about Bemis and the buffalo on his security copy of what was then chapter 8, Clemens must have enclosed it in this letter. Since he did not mail the letter until 10 April, however, he probably did not separately mail the “20 or 30 pages” with their corrections “to-night” (9 April), but rather sent them with the letter. None of the actual enclosures has survived, but for a discussion of their possible content, see RI 1993, 848–49.

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6 By 10 April, when he wrote this final postscript, Clemens had reached about the beginning of chapter 27, his account of his journey to Humboldt County, Nevada Territory (RI 1993, 814, 847). On 12 April he went to New York, where he remained for at least two days. His business there has not been identified, but he might well have met with Isaac Sheldon to follow up on his letter of 6 April, or with Francis P. Church to arrange for his final payment for the Galaxy “Memoranda” (27 Mar 71 to Piatt; “Prominent Arrivals,” New York Tribune, 13 Apr 71, 8; “Morning Arrivals,” New York Evening Express, 13 Apr 71, 3).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L4, 376–378; Hill, 53, excerpts; MTLP, 63–64.

Provenance:see Moffett Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

6 570th • [possibly ‘6570th’]

page • [possibly ‘pages’; ‘s’ partly formed]

P. S. • [capitals underscored three times]

OVER • [capitals simulated, not underscored]

to-night. • [deletion implied]