To
William Wright (Dan De Quille)
26 March 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, in pencil: Axelrod, UCCL 01318)
Mch 26
Old Daniel—
I wasn’t scolding in earnest—couldn’t, for the reason that nobody had made any mistake but [me.] 1
It did not discomfort me to observe that Overman had dropped, because I judged it could rise again;2 & I also judged that Mackey knew what he was talking about. When you or m Mackey think it is time to sell out the stock, just fire away whether you lose or make. You bought to make, but that is no reason why you should be any more infallible in your judgment than other men. If you sell at a loss, jam the remnant into stocks again & sail on, O ship of State, sail on, sail on!3 You needn’t take the torouble to ask me, when you think it best to sell, but just bang away.
I go to New York an hour from N now, to lecture 4 afternoons on my own hook & on my own risk & expense.4 Be gone a week. Can’t see Bliss till I get back, but have just written him to send you written authority & price of books.5
Yrs ever
Mark.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Wright had replied to Clemens’s letter of 7 March. That reply is not known to survive.
The Overman mine was “one of the most noted and important in many respects on the Comstock” (Angel 1881, 616). In 1863, while living in Virginia City, Clemens had
missed an opportunity to become a shareholder when Overman stock was on the rise (18 July 1863 to JLC and PAM, L1, 260–61).
Longfellow’s apostrophe to the Federal Union in his ode, “The Building of the Ship,” published in The Seaside and the Fireside in 1850.
See 17 Mar 1876 to Redpath, n. 2.
That is, so that Wright could participate in the subscription canvass for The Big Bonanza, as Clemens had advised him to do (7 Mar 1876 to Wright). The American Publishing Company issued the book in July 1876.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
AAA/Anderson Galleries catalog, sale of 17–18 February 1938, lot 91, paraphrase; MicroPUL, reel 1.
Provenance:
The MS was offered for sale in 1938 by the AAA/Anderson Galleries. By 1983 it was in the collection of Todd M. Axelrod.
Emendations and textual notes:
me. [¶] It • ~.— | [¶] ~
