1A typed transcript in the Mark Twain Papers is the source of the present letter and two others (UCCL 12557 and UCCL 01497) . This letter was written on the front of Merritt’s check, sent in response to Clemens’s letter of 14 and 16 February to the editor of the New York World, in which he commented on “the difference between 5-cent & 40-cent toddy.” Merritt has been conjecturally identified as John C. Merritt (1845–1918), a Brooklyn, New York, physician.