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To
the Superintendent of the American Asylum for
Deaf and Dumb
23 February 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: CtHMTH, UCCL
10587)
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Monday.1
Dear Sir:2
We are glad to have young Wheeler come out here as often as
he pleases, for he is evidently a good, well-meaning boy; but then he
always stays to dinner, & I can hardly overstate the inconvenience it
often is. I cannot say this to him lest I hurt his
feelings. So I appeal to you to break the matter to him in a kind way. No, not
that, but tell him not to stop to
dinner——(& give no reason.) No doubt that
would be better —& easier on him. Poor boy, we rather
dread his advent a little, under the best of circumstances, for we
don’t know how to go about entertaining him.3
Ys Truly
Samℓ. L. Clemens.
To the
[Superintentdent ] of the
Deaf & Dumb Asylum
City. [postmarked:] [hartford ct. feb 2
12m]
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1
This letter has been dated on the evidence of the partly legible
postmark (“
feb
2
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”) and the stationery, which Clemens first
used in December 1873 and used frequently in February 1874. The only
possible “Monday” was therefore 23 February.
Although Clemens sometimes used the same stationery in the late
1870s, he could not have written the letter later than 1876 (see
note 3).
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2
The American Asylum for Deaf and Dumb (now the American School for
the Deaf) in Hartford was the pioneer American institution for the
education of the deaf. Incorporated in 1816, it opened on 15 April
1817 under the leadership of Thomas H. Gallaudet
(1787–1851). In 1820 it obtained from Congress a large
grant of land in Alabama Territory, which it converted to an
endowment to pay its operating costs. The asylum did not have a
superintendent but was led by a principal, who from February 1871
until his death in 1878 was Edward C. Stone. No evidence has been
found that Clemens was acquainted with him (
Trumbull, 1:425–30;
Geer 1873, 286; American
School for the Deaf).
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3
James Clinton Wheeler (1857–83) had lost his hearing after
contracting scarlet fever as a young child. He enrolled at the American
Asylum for Deaf and Dumb in 1872 and left in 1876 to become a postal
clerk in New York City, dying a few years later of consumption. It was a
fifteen-minute walk from the school, on Asylum Street, to the house the
Clemenses rented in 1874. Nothing is known of the arrangements made for
Wheeler’s visits, but, according to W. Winfield McChord,
executive director of the successor American School for the Deaf,
“the students were under constant supervision and never left
the campus without written permission” (McChord to Michael B.
Frank, 25 Feb 2000,
CU-MARK;
31 Jan 74 to Fuller,
n. 1).
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MS, Mark Twain House, Hartford (
CtHMTH).
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Previous publication:
L6, 45–46.
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Emendations and textual notes:
Superintentdent •
[‘t’ partly
formed]
hartford ct. feb 2
12m
•
har[t
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]
ct. f[e
2
] 12[m]
[badly
inked]