In my old home,
St Louis, Mo, Apl
11.
Click to add citation to My Citations.
Dear Miss Alice1—
You remember I promised you, a long time ago in the Sandwich Islands, that I would asc be sure to get you a silver sword when I ascended Haleakala.2 I got it away down in the old crater, & used to try to think to send it to you, but always recollected it at some unseasonable hour.
[Packing] my trunk [to-night] (for I leave to-morrow for New York, &, I suppose, for Europe a month later,) I came across the old swords, & hasten to send them, begging at the same time that you will excuse my characteristic negligence. I had to send them—I wouldn’t consider the Island trip complete with so chivalrous a promise, so knightly a deed as the disarming of a crater many times larger than myself & the laying of his weapons at the feet of a lady, unaccomplished. How’s that? I think I’ll put that in my lecture.
Remember me kindly, & many, many times, to Mrs. Hyde,3 & believe me
Your Obliged serv’t
Upon many pleas
ant Occasions,
Sam. L. Clemens
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
Alice (1844?–78) and her mother (see note 3), of San
Francisco, were fellow passengers with Clemens on the Ajax when he sailed to the Hawaiian Islands
in March 1866. Alice was still unmarried when she was killed in an
accident in 1878 (New York Census 1850,
244–45; “Passengers,” Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 24 Mar 66, 2;
Langley 1867, 263; “Terrible Runaway Accident”
and “Died,” San Francisco Alta California, 12 Mar 78, 1, 4).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 2
The silversword plant (Argyroxiphium sandwichense)
is found only in the high-altitude areas of the islands of Maui and
Hawaii. The base of its tall central flower stem is surrounded by a
dense head of slender, rigid, daggerlike leaves, eight to sixteen inches
long, which are covered with silvery hairs. “In Hawaii the
gathering of a silversword corresponds with the gathering of the
edelweiss in the Alps, and furnishes the adventurous climber a prize
well worth keeping as a memento of a trip that invariably costs much in
exertion if not in actual peril” (William Alanson Bryan, 229). Clemens hiked up to
the summit of Haleakala, a 10,023-foot-high dormant volcano with a
crater 2,720 feet deep, during his visit to Maui from mid-April to 22
May 1866; his description of the trip may be found in chapter 76 of Roughing It ( N&J1, 100).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 3
Jane V. B. Hyde (1811?–85) and her husband, William F. Hyde
(1799?–?1858), a merchant, had five children, of whom Alice
was the second youngest. They moved from New York City to San Francisco
in December 1851. Alice’s oldest brother, Henry Clay Hyde (b.
1835), became a prominent San Francisco attorney (New
York Census 1850, 244–45; “Will of Jane
V. B. Hyde,” San Francisco Morning
Call, 30 Dec 85, 1; Langley 1858, 162; Langley 1859, 157; Langley 1860, 174; Langley 1867, 263; Rasmussen, 2:131–32,
3:32–33; San Francisco City and County 1867, s.v. “Hyde, Henry
Clay”).
Source text(s):MS, Department of Special Collections, University Library, University of
California, Santa Barbara (CU-SB).
Previous publication:
L2, 21–22.
Provenance:unknown.
Emendations and textual notes:
Packing • [‘P’ possibly mended from partly formed ‘B’ or ‘H’]
to-night • to-|night
