To Daniel Slote
11 September? 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(Transcript, Slote and Woodman 1877, p. [8], UCCL 11146)
(SUPERSEDED)

[Hartford], Monday Evening1

[My Dear Slote]:—I have invented [&] patented a new Scrap Book, not to make money out of it, but to economise the profanity of this country. You know that when the average man wants to put something in his scrap book he can’t find his paste—then he swears; or if he finds it, it is dried so hard that it is only fit to eat—then he swears; if he uses mucilage it mingles with the ink, [&] next year he can’t read his scrap—the result is barrels [&] barrels of profanity. This can all be saved [&] devoted to other irritating things, where it will do more real [&] lasting good, simply by substituting my self-pasting Scrap Book for the old-fashioned one.

If Messrs. Slote, Woodman & Co. wish to publish this Scrap Book of mine, I shall be willing. You see by the above paragraph that it is a sound moral work, [&] this will commend it to editors [&] clergymen, [&] in fact to all right feeling people. If you want testimonials I can get them, [&] of the best sort, [&] from the best people. One of the most refined [&] cultivated young ladies in Hartford (daughter of a clergyman) told me herself, with grateful tears standing in her eyes, that since she began using my Scrap Book she has not sworn a single oath.2

Truly yours,

[Mark Twain.]

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens invented his self-pasting scrapbook in August 1872 and received a patent on it in June 1873. Beginning in 1877, it was sold by Slote’s blank-book manufacturing firm, Slote, Woodman and Company, and its successor, Daniel Slote and Company, and made a steady small profit. It was on the market at least until 1912 (see L5, 143–46). Clemens might have planned the initial sales campaign with Slote in New York in the first week of September 1876, when he stopped at the St. James Hotel for a few days en route to Hartford after the summer in Elmira. He could then have written this letter from Hartford as early as Monday, 11 September 1876, although he might have written it any time over the next few months. A version of it appeared in the New York Herald on 11 December 1876 (“Literary Chit Chat,” 8), and probably in other papers as well, presumably at Slote’s instigation. The present text is from an eight-page folding pamphlet that Slote issued in 1877.

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2 Both father and daughter evidently were fictitious.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Copy-text:

Transcript, Slote and Woodman 1877, [8].

Previous publication:“Literary Chit Chat,” New York Herald, 11 Dec 76, 8; SLC 1878, endpaper; Clemens 1932, 52.

Emendations and textual notes:

Hartford • Hartford

My Dear Slote • My Dear Slote

& • and

& • and

& • and

& • and

& • and

& • and

& • and

& • and

& • and

& • and

& • and

Mark Twain • MARK TWAIN