From Samuel L. and Olivia L. Clemens
to Mary E. (Mollie) Clemens
5? January 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: NPV, UCCL 02795)

[first two MS pages (about 200 words) missing]

don’t know but I will. I would like to do drop in on Bliss, too, since he has got into his new house.1

Tell Orion I’ll bet he is right & Bliss wrong—brief introductories are best. Make them short & me fill them full of meat, is the trick.2

[ T ] Rev. Mr. Twichell may be justly described without flattery to be a bully boy with a glass eye (as the lamented Josephus phrases ‸it‸ in his Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire) ‸—so is his [wife—‸&] I wrote him to call on Orion & get acquainted—which he said says he will just as soon as a press of botherations gives him a chance.3 Both of you go slow—don’t hurry in the matter of making friends, & don’t get impatient. Making friends in Yankee land is a slow, slow [business], but they are friends worth having when they are made. There is no section in America fit half so good to live in as splendid old New England—& there is no city on this continent so lovely & lovable as Boston, almost in sight of which it is now your high privilege to live.

The baby’s weight has increased to 7½ pounds & his personal [comeliness] in [proportion.] I [ fed feel] that I can say without exaggeration that he is [ humping ] (our little boy never humps. Livy) ‸humping‸ himself.4

Bless my soul

Good bye

Yrs

Sam.

[in ink:] P. S. Have written Bliss & asked him to get Orion [ 2 ] season passes to theatre.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Bliss had moved from 273 to 265½ Asylum Street by July 1870. Clemens’s last known visit to Hartford was in December 1869. A desire to avoid Bliss’s hospitality had been one of his reasons for staying away (19 Dec 70 to Twichell; L3, 439; Geer: 1869, 55; 1870, 57).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Orion and Bliss were planning the editorial content of the American Publisher. The general “introductories” ultimately published were brief and itemized the sort of “useful information” that readers could expect to find. A contemplated “elaborate apology for ‘Number One’ ” was abandoned (OC 1871 [bib12050], 1871 [bib12051]).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 Orion reported to Clemens on 25 January: “Twitchell and his wife called on us before we moved. He had previously called on me at the office. Mollie and I like them both very much” (CU-MARK). According to an 1872 article on contemporary expressions, “ ‘Bully’ is a term of commendation applied in a patronizing way among the vulgar, and means very fine. A more extensive phrase is ‘A bully boy with a glass eye’ ” (“Popular Phrases,” Chicago Tribune, 1 Jan 72, 1). Clemens again attributed the term to the historian Flavius Josephus in chapter 22 of Roughing It (RI 1993, 147).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

4 Clemens retraced “humping” in ink (Olivia had canceled it) when he added his postscript.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).

Previous publication: L4, 298–299; MTBus, 118, excerpt.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

T • [partly formed]

wife—‸& • wife—‸—&

business • busininess

comeliness • comyliness

proportion • pro-| proportion

fed feel • fedel feel [rewritten for clarity]

humping • [canceled by OLC]

2 • ‸ 2 2‸ [rewritten for clarity]