To James Redpath
7–8 July 1871 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: TxU, UCCL 00632)

Dear Redpath—

You seem to blame me for changing my lecture title—but if it [ w ] is a blamable offense it is yours, not mine. You see, I was well satisfied with my Boy Appeal, but you seemed to doubt, & suggested my old lectures in such a way that it scared me & I set about bettering the condition of things ([thingking ]I had a week or two to make up my mind in.) The result was that I wrote a second lecture. Before it was cold I grew dissatisfied with it. I wrote a third (the one about People I have m Met,) & being thoroughly & completely satisfied with it, I naturally chose it & wrote you—(imagining that you wd prefer that I deliver a good lecture rather than a poor one.) Now I am sure that it would be good judgment to change a lecture even after all the contracts were made, when one has such good grounds as mine in this instance. Are you still angry, now that you perceive that it was you that unsettled me about the first lecture?1

Yrs

Clemens

[letter docketed:] boston lyceum bureau. redpath & fall. jul 10 1871 [and] Twain Mark | Elmira N.Y. Recd 7/10

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 The change in lecture title had come after Redpath issued the 1871–72 Lyceum Magazine and began contracting for engagements (15 June 71, 27 June 71 [1st and 2nd], all to Redpath). In 1869 Clemens had made a similar late change, with annoying consequences (15 Sept 71 to Redpath, n. 5).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin (TxU).

Previous publication: L4, 430.

Provenance:The MS, owned until his death by James Gordon Bennett, Jr. (1841–1918), editor of the New York Herald, was included in a sale of his estate in 1926 (Anderson Galleries 1926, lot 149).

Emendations and textual notes:

w • [partly formed]

thingking • [‘g’ partly formed]