To Olivia L. Clemens
9 November 1871 • Worcester, Mass.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00670)

Worcester, ——

Livy darling, am just in from the lecture—just in from talking to 1700 of the staidest, puritanical g people you ever saw—one of the hardest g gangs to start that move, that ever was. By George the next time I come here I mean to put some cathartic pills in my lecture. The confounded [chairman ] sat on the stage behind me—a thing I detest. He is the last one that can air his good clothes & his owlish mug on my platform[.] I will have no more of this.

I’m going to bed—I’m disgusted. This chairman was in very good spirits after the lecture. Said he—“Can’t anybody rouse up our audiences, but by j George you fetched ’em; & kept ’em at it, too.” “Fetched your grandmother!” I said,—“a man couldn’t fetch them with a hundred thousand yoke of oxen.”1

But I love you, darling, & I’m going to scoot to bed. Kiss cubbie & mother for me. With a world of love—

Saml.

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor. Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn [postmarked:] worcester mass. [nov ] 10

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 According to the Worcester Spy, the capacity audience included “a sufficient number of people with a just appreciation of wit to acknowledge the hour of fun, and laugh most heartily; but there were others who did not appreciate the treat, and went down stairs at the close, talking about the very silly lecture they had listened to” (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” 10 Nov 71, 1).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L4, 487–488; MFMT, 45, with omissions.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

chairman • chair-|man [also at 487.11]

nov • n [o] [badly inked]