To Orion Clemens
10 April 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01074)

Apl. 10.

Dear Bro:

Am expecting Mollie presently.1

There seems to have been an item in the N. Y. Eve. Post the other day, saying that I had paid for a complimentary dinner to myself. Keep perfectly quiet about this but get me a copy of that paper—don’t cut out the item.2 There is going to be a libel suit, & I [ t ] want that fact to be kept secret.

Yr Bro

Sam

Orion Clemens Esq
40 W. 9th st.
New York. [in upper left corner:] Private.
[rule] [on flap:] slc/mt [postmarked:] n. y. & boston [r.p.o. ] apr 103

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Mollie Clemens was taking the train up from New York to ask Clemens for financial assistance (see 23 Apr 74 to OC, 10 May 74 to JLC, and 10 May 74 to OC).

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2 Orion was still working as a proofreader on the New York Evening Post, under a foreman who, Clemens recalled, “swore at him & ordered him around ‘like a steamboat mate’” (9 Feb 79 to Howells, NN-B, in MTHL, 1:254).

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3 That is, the New York and Boston railway post office, which operated over the New Haven and Hartford Railroad and accepted mail at the Hartford railroad station. Clemens mailed his letter there while awaiting Mollie (Norona, 362–63, 381; Remele, 1; Geer 1873, 308).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L6, 103–104.

Provenance:see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

t • [partly formed]

r.p.o. • []o. [badly inked]