To William S. Andrews
28 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: VtMiM, UCCL 01070)

3/28/74.

My Dear Andrews:

Dialect is your forte, not logic, by [my ] my boy. You get up a painstaking & excellent argument to show that if it weren’t for me, ‸{& it’s mighty complimentary, I grant you,}‸ you couldn’t follow your lucrative lecturing, but would have to reti‸re‸ er from the platform.; that you use my stuff with happy effect & that it proves a kind of inexhaustible bank account to you. And then upon ‸from‸ that able argument you draw the curious deduction that all this places me in your debt! My God, what a light the law has lost in you, my boy!1

But chaff aside, old friend, I can’t do the thing you wish me to do. I am buried up to the eyes in work, & that work ‸is‸ standing still; for my wife is ill & has been for some little time; we have to deny ourselves & close the house against all visitors. I am just waiting & watching for a time when I may venture to remove my tribe to Elmira, N. Y., for the summer & get away from the cares & worries of housekeeping. When I do get to work again I shall know how to make the most of the minutes.

Hope to catch a glimpse of you at the Lotos as we pass through the city—as we hope to do within a [fortnight ] if the madam improves.2

Ys Ever

[ ◇ ] S. L. Clemens.

W. A Andrews Esq
(Dialecter,)
Lotos Club
‸2 Irving Place‸
New York. [on flap:] slc/mt [postmarked:] [hartford ct. mar 28 6 pm]

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Andrews’s standard lecture was “Dialect Humor,” which included readings from Clemens’s work. He occasionally asked Clemens for assistance in preparing his material (see L5, 208–9, 434–35).

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2 Clemens anticipated passing through New York City on the way to Elmira. Both he and Andrews were members of the Lotos Club (L5, 291–92).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont (VtMiM).

Previous publication: L6, 95–96.

Provenance:purchased from William F. Kelleher in April 1944.

Emendations and textual notes:

my • [‘y’ partly formed]

fortnight • fort-|night,

◇ • [partly formed character, possibly ‘p’]

hartford ct. mar 28 6pm • ford ct. mar 28 6pm [badly inked]