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Add to My Citations To Olivia L. Clemens
31 October 1871 • Milford, Mass.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00668)
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wyoming valley hotelem spacej. b. stark, prop’r1.

wilkes-barre, pa., em spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem space 187em space

Milford, Mass,2 31st

Livy darling, the same old practising on audiences still goes on—the same old feeling of pulses & altering manner & matter to suit the symptoms. The very same lecture that convulsed Great Barrington was received with the gentlest & most well-bred smiles & rippling comfort by Milford. Now we’ll see what Boston is going to do. Boston must sit up & behave, & do right by me. As Boston goes, so goes New England.

I got no letters at Brattleboro. None a had come. None in the post office, either. No proofs from Bliss.3 Brattleboro is unreliable, I guess.

I didn’t write last night. Felt kind of beat out. To-day I traveled the entire day in piddling [trains ] that stopped every four or five minutes. P Am lazy, but not a bit tired—hot bath fetched me around handsomely. Saw Mrs. Lee’s [brother ] [tonight ] (we saw her at Gov. Hawley’s.)4

Read Eugene Aram all day—found it tedious—skipped 4 pages out of 5. Skipped the corporal all the time. He don’t amount to anything.5 World of love. Kiss mother & cubbie for

Sam.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 See 19 Oct 71 to Bliss, n. 1.

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2 After his Great Barrington lecture of Friday, 27 October, Clemens had a free weekend. Probably he spent it in Hartford, about sixty miles away, before keeping his engagements in Brattleboro, Vermont, and Milford, on 30 and 31 October, respectively.

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3 Possibly an indication that Clemens “had received no proof at all since leaving on tour” (RI 1993, 870). See 9 Oct 71 to Redpath, n. 2.

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4 Possibly Mrs. William Elliott Lee, the mother of Charles Dudley Warner’s wife, the former Susan Lee (“Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner,” New York Times, 14 Jan 1921, 11). Warner’s partner in the Hartford Courant was Joseph R. Hawley, former governor of Connecticut.

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5 Ex-corporal Jacob Bunting was a humorous character in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s 1832 novel about the murderous crime of a quiet schoolmaster.



glyphglyphSource text(s):glyph
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

glyphglyphPrevious publication:glyph L4, 483–484; LLMT, 162–63; Chester L. Davis 1977, 1, excerpt.

glyphglyphProvenance:glyphsee Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

glyphglyphEmendations and textual notes:glyph


trains • [‘in’ conflated]

brother • brootther [canceled ‘t’ partly formed]

tonight • to-|night