Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Orion Clemens
17 September 1871 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00653)

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the mcintyre coal companypresidents office

elmira, n.y. Sept. 17 1871

My Dear Bro:

Inclose a letter from Bunker. Now as I touch him up a little in the book, I don’t want to write him. So you [must write] him & say that as I am probably out lecturing by this time I leave all my correspondence to be answered by you & Livy for the next 5 or 6 months. That will get me out of the difficulty.1

The baby is doing splendidly. We go to Buffalo tonight to pack up for Hartford.

Yr Bro

Sam

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 Benjamin B. Bunker was attorney of Nevada Territory from 1861 to 1863, when he was removed for inattention to his duties after more than a year’s leave of absence. While in Nevada, Clemens sometimes wrote scornfully and irreverently of Bunker, foreshadowing the depiction of him as the gullible and pompous General Buncombe in chapter 34 of Roughing It (L1, 135 n. 6, 147–48, 170, 235 n. 4; ET&S1, 280–81; RI 1993, 221–27, 631–32). The letter from Bunker that occasioned this commission for Orion is not known to survive.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

glyph Previous publication: L4, 458–459.

glyph Provenance:see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

must write • must wr write [corrected miswriting; canceled ‘r’ partly formed]