To William A. Seaver
25 September 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: WU, UCCL 01100)

Sept. 25.

Dear Seaver:

Am now answering the c accumulated correspondence of 3 weeks, & find your hearty note of the 17th.1 I knew you’d be glad the play was commended, & I hope that before this you & John Hay have been there & wept. I [ told telegraphed ] a box to Hay at Tribune office, but doubtless he was out of town. They told me at the Theatre that you were coming to see the piece shortly.

Remember that darkey yarn I told you & Hay? Well, it has gone to the “Atlantic” & so you boys can’t gobble it, you see. But come to think, it would have been much better to let Hay do it in verse.2

Ys Ever

Mark

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Not known to survive.

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2 Seaver and John Hay probably heard the germ of “A True Story” in New York in late June or early July (see p. 171). Clemens admired Hay’s verse portraits of “the Western life and character,” and Hay in turn lauded Clemens’s proficiency at dialect and his “memory and imagination” (L4, 300 n. 1 top; 18 Dec 74 to Howells; L5, 33–35).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU).

Previous publication: L6, 245–246.

Provenance:Norman D. Bassett, a Madison alumnus, owned the MS by October 1942. He donated his Mark Twain collection to WU on 9 July 1955.

Emendations and textual notes:

told telegraphed • to eldegraphed