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

To Frank Fuller
24 September 1868 • St. Louis, Mo.
(MS: CLjC, UCCL 02753)

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St Louis, Sept 24.

Noble Chief:

I Your six-line letter is just to hand, but no [cundrum. However, never mind the cundrums. I can get along without them, I suppose. My aunt never uses them. ]Some people can do things as well as others.1

Mr. Torbert appears to be getting along well enough in ‸with‸ the lecture tour. I have made several other appointments to preach.2

I hope you are well, Judge, & I hope your Company is well, also. I like Odorless Rubber Companies. I like them because they don’t stink.3

Yrs always,

Mark.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 “Some things can be done as well as others” was one of the mottoes rendered proverbial by Sam Patch (1807?–29), a daredevil who became a folk hero in 1827 when he jumped from a seventy-foot cliff at Passaic Falls. Two years later he was killed in a jump from the top of Genesee Falls, near Rochester (Dorson, 133–38).

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2 See 15 Aug 68 to Fuller, n. 3. Clemens’s winter tour began in Cleveland on 17 November 1868 and ended in mid-March 1869. Torbert was responsible for midwestern engagements only: according to Clemens, by late November he had booked twenty-one dates between 23 December (later moved up to 22 December) and 18 January. Clemens himself arranged ten appearances in November and December, mainly in eastern towns, in part through the agency of the American Literary Bureau in New York, which as early as 3 October was listing “Saml. L. Clemens (Mark Twain)” as an available lecturer on “Americans in the Old World.” Later in the tour, Torbert continued to add new engagements until Clemens told him to stop (29? Nov 68 to PAM; “The Price of Lectures,” New York Evening Post, 28 Nov 68, 2; “The Lecture Season,” Round Table 8 [3 Oct 68]: 234; SLC to OLL, 29 Jan 69, CU-MARK; see Clemens’s lecture schedule for November 1868–January 1869).

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3 See 15 Aug 68 to Fuller, n. 7.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, The James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, Calif. (CLjC, call no. 2421).

glyph Previous publication: L2, 254–255.

glyph Provenance:Many years after receiving this one-page letter, Fuller wrote in pencil on the back: “The ‘Odorless Rubber Company’ was started by me in Bridgeport to make certain India Rubber goods with little or no Sulpher in the rubber mixture. The products were beautiful but cost too much for the trade. I sold it to a Mr Post FF.” CLjC acquired the letter in July 1966 as part of a Fuller collection. At that time, it was paired with the envelope for Clemens’s 6 Sept 74 letter to Fuller (UCCL 01124), whose only surviving text is an Ayer transcript (WU).

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

cundrum . . . cundrums . . . My aunt never uses them. • [Someone other than Clemens heavily canceled these seven words sometime after the letter was received.]