To Orion Clemens
28 August 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01120)

Elmira, 28th.

My Dear Bro:

Yrs containing cheque for $9, received—but I fear your interest tables are sadly inaccurate. Or did Ed Brownell, a banker & mathematician, make the calculation?1

Livy’s visit to Fredonia came within an ace of making her an invalid for life, but Mrs. Gleason thinks she has escaped, now. I was confident she had no business to attempt such a journey, but I yielded to her urgings. We tried to break the trip into short journeys, but were not able to get them short enough to do any real good.

We go to Hartford a 10 days hence if she is then in good strength. The babies are doing admirably. Love to Mollie.

Yr Bro

Sam.

Orion Clemens Esq
Keokuk
Iowa [return address:] if not delivered within 10 days to be returned to [postmarked:] elmira[n. y. aug] 31 10am

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 The interest was on the money Clemens had loaned to Orion and Mollie—“a check for $700 & another for $200” (10 May 74 to JLC)—to finance their move to Keokuk. Orion’s payment represented an annual rate of 12 percent. But it is unlikely that Clemens expected any more than the 8 percent that Orion and Mollie had been prepared to pay Mollie’s father to purchase his Keokuk property. In 1875 Clemens charged John T. Raymond 7 percent for a short-term loan. Ed Brownell, a banker in Keokuk, had recently visited Clemens (see 23 Apr 74 to OC, n. 1; 29 July 74 to OC; and 13 May 75 to Raymond).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L6, 213–214.

Provenance:see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

olc • [SLC rotated the stationery clockwise 90 degrees, so that the monogram appears on its side in the upper right corner]

n. y. aug • n.[y][au]g [badly inked]