1 This manuscript is a draft of the message that Clemens actually cabled to Bliss. The document Bliss received has not been found. For the date of this telegram, see the next letter.

2 Appearing upside down and on the back of this sheet are notes Clemens made for his most recent version of the long-germinating “Noah’s Ark” book, which he described in 1909:

(For Clemens’s earlier and later work on the project, see L3 312, 313–14 n. 7; L4, 296 n. 3; and Baetzhold and McCullough, 91–110.) This draft telegram is among a group of sketchy notes, all on the same paper, which Clemens wrote in Edinburgh. Many of them refer explicitly to Exodus, chapters 19–22 and 34–35 (SLC 1873). On this particular sheet Clemens wrote “Edinburgh” four times, and several calculations to determine in what year various biblical characters died, based on figures from chapters 5–9 of Genesis, which recount the history of every generation from Adam’s creation until the death of Noah—a total of 2006 years. Clemens also wrote “Meth died 1656,” a conclusion he derived from Methuselah’s birth 687 years after the creation, to which he added the 969 years of his life.