To Cornelius R. Agnew
23 June 1875 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: OKeU, UCCL 01243)

June 23d.

My Dear Dr. Agnew:

I shipped the books this morning—I only wish they had been as great in number as they are profound & instructive in character.1

I very much wanted to show you all over our house, so that you might see some of Mr. Potter’s interior taste, but feared to propose it lest it might be a bore—& now Mrs. Clemens tells me that you yourself proposed it—& just in a woman’s illogical way she sclolds me, who didn’t know of it! But I’ll make amends when you come again—indeed I seriously meant that you see that divan in the study, even if it did bore you a little!—for I am not all charity & consideration & delicacy.

I had to break the news to both of those poor women at the same time—“Nell” would have it no other wise—they bore the thing better than I did myself. They have not decided, yet, what they will [do. With] kindest regards from Mrs. Warner, Mrs. C. & myself.2

Yrs Truly

S. L. Clemens.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The 1 January 1876 statement of Clemens’s account with the American Publishing Company indicates that on 22 June 1875 he purchased a “Set of his books”—The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, and The Gilded Age—in half-morocco binding, for $5.40, clearly for Agnew (APC 1876).

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2 As Clemens requested in his letter of 7 June, Agnew came up from New York on 16 June to examine and recommend a treatment for Nell Kinearney. The second of the “poor women” was Annie K. Simons, Kinearney’s sister; they lived near the Clemenses, on Forest Street (Geer 1875, 133; Simons to OLC, 26 Oct 75, CU-MARK). Lilly Warner passed on the news in her 17 June letter to her husband (CU-MARK):

Dr. Agnew came up last evening at 7, & examined Nell’s eyes, & his decision is that nothing can be done but the removal that Dr. Bowen wished to make. . . . Mr. Clemens has been down this morning & had a long talk with those two poor people, telling them the result, & going over all the ground. Do you know what a tender hearted man he is?

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio (OKeU).

Previous publication: L6, 498–499.

Provenance:purchased in 1968 from the Gilman Bookstore in Crompond, New York.

Emendations and textual notes:

do. With • do.—|With