Hartford, Nov. 7.
My Dear Jones—
All right, my boy, I’ve engaged a room with a fire in it, at the Palmer h House, & shall arrive there at 8 or 9 o’clock next Monday morning (th my idea being to get in ahead of the big crowd on the railways if I can.) You drop in & see me.
Of course I shall come with my (impromptu) speech all tucked away in my memory, but you ‸ must be generous & not put me late.‸
[about 4 lines (25 words) cut away]
I’m an old hand at this trade, & I know that when people have been listening to responses any over an hour & a half & still another fellow gets up on his hind legs & offers to open his mouth, he is likely to ‸have to‸ begin to dodge champagne bottles about that [time. I] don’t reckon military ‸folks‸ differ from other banqueteers—they all want to kill the late speaker. In my stupidity I forgot, the other day, that “Woman” is always put politely at the tail-end of of the regular toasts—but now is a good time to advance her to an honorable place in the centre of the list, & make have the Chairman brag about this prin appreciative, this noble, this magnanimous conduct on the part of the Army of the Tennessee, first in war, first in peace, & first in the hearts of their countrywomen. You pour out some eloquence [on] Col. Tuthill about that, my boy. Of course the programme is already printed & can’t be re-printed; but you just get the Chairman to say it was a mistake of the printer—let him rise above the paltry requirements of truth on an occasion so stately—let him proceed to curse that printer—let us all join in & help curse him—then let the Chairman state that the Committee decreed that Woman & the Babies should come Nos. 6 & 7 in the list, & they shall come the‸re‸ n in spite of all the printers & other sons of sin & heirs of perdition in the world. That’ll set the fashion—the American fashion—& effete Europe will gnash her teeth th to think she overlooked that chivalrous idea & lost the chance of inventing it.
Darn it, I wants to have a good time; & how can I have a good time if I have to sit there two or three hours in the family way with my Babies & not knowing whether I’m going to miscarry or not? Now see if it can’t be fixed so I shan’t have to go over my time & be delivered with instruments.
I should have taken you at your word & asked you to secure me a rattling good room at the Palmer House, (for I’m as fond of a good room as any old maid you ever saw,) but I thought maybe you might have your hands pretty full, so I telegraphed the hotel myself. If it should come convenient, I wish you would just inquire if it is a pretty fair sort of a room. At the same time a body will be lucky to get any kind of a room, I judge.
Well, I hope the General is going to be President again; & if signs go for anything he is going to be.
Ys Truly
S. L. Clemens
I was afraid Col. Tuthill did not like my trying to alter the plans, but suggestions by telegraph sound abrupt & impertinent when ones is farthest from intending such a thing.
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):Previous publication:
Davis 1981, 2–3.
Provenance:The Morse Collection was donated to CtY in 1942 by Walter F. Frear.
Emendations and textual notes:
time. I • time.—|I
on • on on [corrected miswriting]
