To William Dean Howells
24 October 1874 • (2nd of 2) • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: NN-B, UCCL 02476)

Home, 24th.
Later——P.M.

My Dear Howells:

I shall not stop the letter I wrote 2 hours ago, because it has the suggestion about the play—but I take back the remark that I can’t write for the Jan. number. For Twichell & I have had a long walk in the woods & I got to telling him about old Mississippi days of steamboating glory & grandeur as I saw them (during 5 years) from the pilot house. He said “What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!” I hadn’t thought of that before. Would you like a series of papers to run through 3 months or 6 or 9?——or about 4 months, say?1

Yrs Ever

Mark.

If you can’t print the enclosed poem you must be sure to send it back to me. Seems good for a child of 17—though I am no judge of poetry—it is as much as I can do to write it.2

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1 “Old Times on the Mississippi” finally comprised seven installments, in the Atlantic for January through June and August 1875 (SLC 1875 [MT02540], 1875 [MT02539], 1875 [MT02541], 1875 [MT02542], 1875 [MT02543], 1875 [MT02544], 1875 [MT02545]). Although Clemens had not previously thought to use the Mississippi River material in magazine articles, in 1866 and again in 1871 he had projected using it in a book (L1, 329, 331 n. 8, and L4, 499). Twichell made a note in his journal of the long afternoon walk, but preserved nothing of the seminal conversation (Twichell, 1:6).

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2 The enclosure, which does not survive, may have been by Clemens’s “cousin,” Emma Parish, who evidently was still of school age and was interested in poetry (see 10 Nov 74 and 19 or 20 Nov 74, both to Parish). The Atlantic Monthly did not publish a poem by her, or by any seventeen-year-old girl, at this time. Clemens himself had written some parodies and light verse, but little that could be considered serious poetry (see Scott, 41–96, where, however, numerous verses are incorrectly attributed to him, especially from the Buffalo Express).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).

Previous publication: L6, 262–263; MTL, 1:229–30, with omission; MTHL, 1:34–35.

Provenance:see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.