Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
5 May 1868 • San Francisco, Calif.
(Transcript: WU, UCCL 02731)
(SUPERSEDED)

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[[San Francisco
May 5./68]

}

E. [Bliss Jr Esq]

[Dr Sir:

The] Alta people, after some hesitation, have given me permission to use my printed letters, [&] have ceased to think of publishing them themselves in book form.] [I am steadily at work, [&] [shall] start [east] with the completed [manuscript] about the middle of June.]1

I lectured [here on the trip] the other [night—]over [sixteen hundred dollars] in gold in the [house—]every seat taken & paid for before night.

[Yrs Truly

Mark Twain]

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1Clemens’s intention was probably to depart on the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s Golden City, scheduled for Saturday, 13 June. The company routinely dispatched its steamers for the Isthmus of Panama (and hence for New York) on the sixth, fourteenth, twenty-second, and thirtieth of each month, except when the date fell on a Sunday, which occasioned departure one day earlier or later (“Ocean Steamers,” San Francisco Alta California, 4 June 68, 4).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Transcript (handwritten, in ink) of the MS (now lost) made by Dana S. Ayer, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU). MTB (1:363) paraphrased and excerpted ‘I am . . . night.’ (215.7–216.2); MTL (1:152–53) published the entire letter. The MTB and MTL texts may derive independently from the MS through a common transcript, possibly the Ayer transcript itself, or another, now lost. Since none of the variants in MTB and MTL has been deemed superior to the readings in Ayer, however, Ayer is designated copy-text, and both MTL and MTB are treated as if they derive from it: all their variants are recorded, though none is adopted.

glyph Previous publication:L2, 215–16; see Copy-text.

glyph Provenance:See Brownell Collection, pp. 509–11.

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

San . . . form. (MTL) • [not in] (MTB)

San . . . 68 [brace] • San Francisco, May 5, ’68. [no brace] (MTL)

Bliss Jr Esq • Bliss, Jr. Esq. (MTL)

Dr Sir: [¶] The • Dr. Sir,—The (MTL)

& • and (MTL)

[no ¶] I am . . . June. (MTL) • [¶] He reports that he is . . . June. [follows ‘I . . . night.’ (216.1–2)] (MTB)

& • and [also at 216.2] (MTB, MTL)

shall • expects to (MTB)

east • East (MTB, MTL)

manuscript (MTB) • Manuscript, (MTL)

here . . . trip (MTB) • here, . . . trip, (MTL)

night—(MTL) • night; (MTB)

sixteen hundred dollars (MTL) • $1,600 (MTB)

house— (MTL) • house; (MTB)

Yrs . . . Twain • [not in] (MTB); Yrs truly, | Mark Twain. (MTL)