To James Redpath
8 August 1871 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: IC, UCCL 00642)

Hartford, Tuesday.
Aug. 8 1

Dear Redpath—

I am different from other women. They have their monthly period once a month, but I have mine once a week, & sometimes oftener. That is to say, my mind changes that often. People who have no mind, can easily be steadfast & firm; but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding, or inclination, or mayhap indolence, shifts his cargo. See?

Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to give rigid instructions to confine me to New England; next week, send me to Arizonia;2 next week, withdraw my name; next week, give you untrameled swing—& the week following, modify [it. You ]must try to keep the run of my mind, Redpath—it is your business, being the agent—& it always was too many for me. It appears to me to be one of the most delicate finest pieces of mechanism I have ever met with. Now about the West. This week I am willing that you should retain all the western engagements you have made, & make as many more as will cluster well, pay high prices & not cost too hard travel.3

But what I shall want next week, is still with God.

Let us not profane the mysteries with soiled hands & prying eyes of sin.

Yrs

Mark.

P. S. Shall be here 2 weeks—will run up there when Nasby comes.4

[letter docketed:] Twain Mark | Hartford, Conn | Aug. 8 ’71 [and] 8/9.71

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Clemens had left Elmira on 2 or 3 August. He spent at least two days in New York City, staying at the St. Nicholas Hotel while shopping for clothes and perhaps attending to other unidentified business. He arrived in Hartford on 5 or 6 August, bringing with him his fifth submission of Roughing It printer’s copy, about 272 manuscript pages (460 equivalent pages: see 15 May 71 to Bliss, n. 3). While in Hartford he planned to give the book its final shape, cutting or adding material as needed (10 July 71 to Bliss; 10 Aug 71 to OLC; 17 Aug 71 to Greeley; RI 1993, 815, 863).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Arizona Territory, the site of recent Indian wars, was unlikely to be included on any lecture itinerary (Annual Cyclopaedia 1871, 723–24).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 Clemens had considered lecturing as far west as Davenport, Iowa. Ultimately no “western engagements” were retained (10 June 71 to Redpath and Fall; 12 June 71 to Redpath; 23 July 71 to Bowen; Lecture Schedule, 1871–1872)

Click to add citation to My Citations.

4 See 14 July 71 to Redpath, n. 2.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Chicago Public Library (IC).

Previous publication: L4, 440–441; Will M. Clemens 1900, 28; MTL, 1:190; Horner, 168–69; “Letters to James Redpath,” Mark Twain Quarterly 5 (Winter–Spring 1942): 20; all with omissions.

Provenance:donated to IC in 1976 by Mrs. Leon Mandel.

Emendations and textual notes:

it. You • it.—|You