To
Jane Lampton
Clemens and Pamela A.
Moffett
25 April 1875 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01224)
Hartford, Sunday.
1My Dear Mother & Sister:
We want to congratulate Annie—& we think you should be congratulated, too, upon having such a cargo of care & worry lifted from you. We got Annie’s letter, but I did not know it until just after mailing mine.2 I was afraid the general snow storm would delay her train, & am glad to hear it did not. I saw Gov. Jewell today & he said he was still moving in the matter of Sammy’s appointment & would stick to it till he got a result of a positive nature one way or the other, but thus far he could did not know whether to expect success or defeat. I confess that I fear it will turn out that only soldiers’ & sailors’ sons can get these special appointments, u but we won’t give it up until we know. I wonder if Mr. Moffett wasn’t in the Home Guard some time or other?3
Ma, whenever you need money I hope you won’t be backward about saying so—you can always have it. We stint r ourselves in some ways, but we have no desire to sl tint you. And we don’t intend to, either.
I can’t “encourage” Orion. Nobody can do that, conscientiously, for the reason that before one’s letter has time to reach him he iss off on some new wild-goose [chase. Would] you encourage in literature a man who, the older he grows the worse he writes? Would you encourage Orion in the glaring insanity of study‸ing‸ I law? If he were packed & crammed full of law, it would be worthless lumber to him, for his is such a capricious & ill-regulated mind el that he would apply the principles of the law with no more judgment than a child of ten years. I know what I am saying. I laid one of the plainest & simplest of legal questions before Orion once, & the helpless & hopeless mess he made of it was absolutely astonishing.4 Nothing aggravates me so much as to have Orion mention law or literature to me.
Well, I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would change ‸his‸ religions so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agent under wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits & board for him.5
I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potter around his little farm & put in his odd hours contriving new & impossible projects at the rate of 365 a year—which is his customary average. He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a man who ought to be entirely satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments & activities of a hen [farm.6
If] you ask me to pity Orion, I can do that. I can do it every day & all day long. But one can’t “encourage” [quicksilver], because it the instant you put your finger on it it isn’t there. No, I am saying too much—he does stick to his literary & legal aspirations; , & sorry & he naturally would select the very two things which he is wholly & preposterously unfitted for. If I ever become able, I mean to put Orion i on a regular pension without revealing the fact that it is a pension. That is best for him. Let him consider it a periodical loan., & pay interest out of the principal.7 Within a year’s time he would be looking upon himself as a benefactor of mine, in the way of furnishing me a good permanent investment for money, & that would make him happy & satisfied with himself. If he had money he would share with me in a moment, & I have no disposition to be stingy with him. But I do hate to spend a cent on Mollie—I always grudge it. I like her father, but do not want his farm.8 The old man has mighty good points about him—along with some bad ones. He is the best of that gang.9
Livy I don’t want any recipe for sleeplessness except a couple of bottles of lager-beer, but I’m willing Livy should try the rubbing. No doubt it is good., though I wish she would learn to drink the beer. Susie & the Bay are fond of it—& of brandy, whisky & wine. It is a great satisfaction to me.
Livy has had the [dipththeria], but is well again. The Bay has a tooth, but has made no disturbance about it. Susie is hoarse a good part of the time—but the sooner she gets used to it the sooner she will like it.
Afly
Sam.
Livy sends love.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
bought a weekly newspaper called the Hannibal Journal, together with its plant and its
good-will, for the sum of five hundred dollars cash. He borrowed the
cash at ten per cent. interest, which was an illegal rate, from an
old farmer named Johnson who lived five miles out of town. Then he
reduced the subscription price of the paper from two dollars to one
dollar. He reduced the rates for advertising in about the same
proportion, and thus he created one absolute and unassailable
certainty—to wit: that the business would never pay him a
single cent of profit. He took me out of the Courier office and engaged my services in his own at three
dollars and a half a week, which was an extravagant wage, but Orion
was always generous, always liberal with everybody except himself.
It cost him nothing in my case, for he never was able to pay me a
single penny as long as I was with him. By the end of the first year
he found he must make some economies. The office rent was cheap, but
it was not cheap enough. He could not afford to pay rent of any
kind, so he moved the whole plant into the house we lived in, and it
cramped the dwelling-place cruelly. He kept that paper alive during
four years, but I have at this time no idea how he accomplished it.
Toward the end of each year he had to turn out and scrape and
scratch for the fifty dollars of interest due Mr. Johnson, and that
fifty dollars was about the only cash he ever received or paid out,
I suppose, while he was proprietor of that newspaper, except for ink
and printing-paper. The paper was a dead failure. It had to be that
from the start. (AD, 29 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:285–86) For more of Orion’s vicissitudes as the Journal’s proprietor and correction of
Clemens’s factual errors here, see Wecter 1952, 239–44,
256–64.
We have just received a letter from Orion after Mela and Annie mailed
theirs to you. Orion said he made your father an offer to buy the
farm you are on, your father declined to accept his offer, but he
left you empowered to sign the papers if your father should change
his mind. Now Mary that looks very strange, if you and Orion are
dissatisfied to live there and the place [is] unhealthy
then why will you try [to] ruin yourselves in debt and
have to stay. Mary any way Mela and me can’t fix the
matter, we think it would be very wrong for Orion to buy the farm
and have a debt hanging over him, even then you don’t get
the house you are in. If Orion should get a situation in the Gate
City and you have the farm rented the chickens will help to pay
expenses until you are independent & buy a pony to go to
town & hire help out there. But I repeat don’t
buy, don’t get in debt,
don’t you sign any papers. My head is feeling Very bad I
can’t write much I wish you were in town in society
& Orion in the G City and making a easy living On Jane’s letter, Mollie wrote: “Ma
seems to think a night situation in the Gate City office would be easier
than out here. It is a great mistake.” Orion, however, seemed
ready to leave the farm. By 11 May he was on a trip through Missouri and
Kentucky to Jamestown, Tennessee. While traveling he visited relatives
and inquired about openings on a number of newspapers and also about
work as a railroad attorney. In Jamestown, he made still another
fruitless effort to exploit the Clemens family’s troublesome
Tennessee land. He returned to the Keokuk farm around 11 June,
determined, he hoped with Clemens’s help, “to
endeavor to push myself into the practice of law in Keokuk”
(OC to SLC, 9 June 75, CU-MARK). Sometime in 1876, evidently, he and
Mollie abandoned the farm and moved to Keokuk proper, where Clemens
supported them while Orion attempted, with little success, to practice
law (OC to MEC, 11 May 75, 14–15 May 75, 20 May 75, 23 May
75, 5 June 75 (2 letters), 9 June 75, and OC to SLC, 21 Jan 76, all in
CU-MARK).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 459–463; MTB, 1:506–7, excerpt; MTL, 1:245, with omissions.
Provenance:see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
chase. Would • chase.—|Would
farm. [¶] If • farm.—| [¶] If
quicksilver • quick-|silver
dipththeria • dipth-|theria [sic]
