To Unidentified
19 October 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 10345)
(SUPERSEDED)

Oct. 19, [1876]

My Dear Sir—

The book has come & I promise myself much pleasure in reading it. So I offer you my thanks in advance.

I was going to see Mrs. Shoot & Miss Mollie when I was last in N Y, but the business I was on kept me clear up to train time. Can’t write to Daly; I don’t know him well enough; but I had talked with him once, & shall [sieze] the first opportunity to do it again; meantime Mollie has a foothold & her chance will come[.] There are many aspirants who cant get even the poor grace of a foothold—& couldn’t keep it if they got it, poor fellows—but Miss Mollie will succeed, I think.1

Ys Truly

S. L. Clemens.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 For the “foothold” Clemens had helped Mollie Shoot secure with Augustin Daly, see 24? Apr 76 to Shoot, n. 1. He may not have known Daly well at this time, but they had corresponded twice in 1874 and once previously in 1876 (see 4 May 76 to Daly and L6, 206–7, 263–65). He had missed seeing Shoot and her mother, Mary (b. 1822?), in New York in early September, when he and his family made their usual stop there en route from Elmira to Hartford (Inds, 347).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Copy-text:

MS, CU-MARK.

Previous publication:Union Art Galleries catalog, 27 February 1934, no. 12, lot 50, partial publication; Sotheby’s catalog, 10–11 December 1993, no. 6515, lot 219, paraphrase; MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:Formerly in the Robert Daley Collection; purchased by CU-MARK on 10 December 1993 through Sotheby’s.

Emendations and textual notes:

1876 • [possibly not written by SLC, although in the same ink as the rest of the letter]

sieze • [sic]