To Mary Mason Fairbanks
10 December 1871 • Erie, Pa.
(MS: CSmH, UCCL 00688)

Erie, Dec. 10.

Dear Mother—

Am writing a new, tip-top lecture about California & Nevada—been at it all night—am still at it & pretty nearly [ w ] dead with fatigue. Shall be studying it in the cars till midnight, & then sleep half the day in Toledo & study the rest. If I am in good condition there, I shall deliver it—but if I’m not just as bright as [a] dollar, shall talk A. Ward two or three nights longer & go on studying.1 Have already tried the new lecture in two villages, night before last & night before that—made a tip-top success in one, but was floored by fatigue & exhaustion of body & mind & made a dismal failure in the other2—so now I am reconstructing & [rewriting] the thing & I’ll fetch ’em next time. , you

From the very first I was planning to spend this day with you & now you see I could not. I am as sorry & a good deal sorrier than you are.3

It is train time & I can only send my warm sincere love to you & yours & jump aboard.

Always lovingly

Saml.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens had returned to “Artemus Ward, Humorist” on Saturday, 9 December, in Erie. The Erie Observer called his performance a “decided failure” and a “pitiful attempt to ape the style of Artemus Ward, in which he only succeeded in reaching the standard of a negro minstrel” (“Mark Twain,” 14 Dec 71, 3).

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2 For the success, see 8 Dec 71 to Redpath and Fall, n. 2. The failure came on 8 December in Fredonia, New York, where Clemens’s mother and sister lived. The Fredonia Censor characterized the “Roughing It” lecture as “a hash of anecdotes, jokes and descriptions” that made a “rather thin diet for an evening’s entertainment,” and concluded that Clemens “does injustice both to himself and the societies employing him” (“Mark Twain’s lecture . . . ,” 13 Dec 71, 3). Probably in Fredonia Clemens received a package of Roughing It matter from Elisha Bliss—“all the parts of the book we have printed so far. We have set up to page 300” (Bliss to SLC, 6 Dec 71, CU-MARK; RI 1993, 871).

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3 Clemens had intended to stop in Cleveland, to see the Fairbankses, on his way from Erie to Toledo, Ohio.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Huntington Library, San Marino (CSmH, call no. HM 14256).

Previous publication: L4, 513; MTMF, 157.

Provenance:see Huntington Library in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

w • [partly formed]

rewriting • re-|writing