To Charles E. Perkins
5 October 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: CtHMTH, UCCL 01370)
(SUPERSEDED)

Oct. 5.

Dr Sir:

If I thought the enclosed piece could live a week, I would attack it at once. Have read the MS—it is inconceivably wretched. It is made up of paragraphs taken bodily from my various books, & idiotically strung together upon the thin thread of a silly love tale.1

Would you advise me to go to the expense of putting on an injunction now, or would you wait till the fate of the abortion is determined?

The assessor has sent me no tax list—I understood you to say he would send one to all tax-payers in October. How am I to get it?2

Ck for $233 (Cincinnati,) rec’d.3

Yrs Truly

S L Clemens

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 The offending work has not been identified.

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2 Frederick P. Lepard, William Benton, and John M. Ney were the incumbent Hartford assessors (Geer 1876, 101, 251). See also 16 Oct 76 to Perkins.

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3 The source of the Cincinnati check has not been determined. As Clemens’s lawyer, Perkins was banking Clemens’s share of the proceeds from John T. Raymond’s current tour with Colonel Sellers, the Gilded Age play. No evidence has been found, however, that Raymond had recently performed in Cincinnati, although Cincinnati had been on his itinerary in the fall of 1875 (see 20 Oct 76 to Perkins; L6, 526, 528 n. 2).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Copy-text:

MS, CtHMTH.

Previous publication: MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:See Perkins Collection in Description of Provenance.