To Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett
10 June 1856 • Keokuk, Iowa
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00011)

I have nothing to write. Everything is going on well. The Directory is coming on finely.2 I have to work on it occasionally, which I don’t like a particle. I don’t like to work at too many things at once. They take Henry and Dick3 away from me too. Before we commenced the Directory, I could tell before breakfast just how much work could be done during the day, [and manage ] accordingly—but now, they throw all my plans into disorder by taking my hands away from their work. I have nothing to do with the book4—if I [ do did ] I [would the ] two [book hands ]do more work than they do, or else I would [drop. ] It is not a mere supposition that they do not work fast enough—I know it; for yesterday the two book hands were at work all day, Henry and Dick all the afternoon, on the advertisements, and they set up [ tw five ] pages and a half—and I set up two pages and a quarter of the same matter after supper night before last, and I don’t work fast on such things. They are either excessively slow motioned or very lazy. I am not getting along well with the job work. I can’t work blindly—without system. I gave Dick a job yesterday, which I calculated he could set in two hours and I could work off in three, and therefore [just ] finish it by supper time, but he was transferred to the Directory, and the job, promised this morning, remains untouched. Through all the great pressure of job work lately, I never before failed in a promise of the kind.

John is gone—disappeared. I think he has [ran ]away to get away from his brutal old father.5

Your son

Sam.

Excuse brevity—this is my 3d letter to-night.

Courtesy of Vassar College Library (NPV).

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Jane Clemens was now living in St. Louis with her daughter and son-in-law, but it is not known when she moved there. She had been in Muscatine, Iowa, with Orion and Henry Clemens, at least as late as the spring of 1854. Possibly she did not go to St. Louis until June 1855, when Orion and his wife, Mollie, and Henry moved to Keokuk; conceivably she lived with them for a time in Keokuk before joining the Moffetts.

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2 Orion had begun assembling information for his Keokuk City Directory immediately after his arrival in Keokuk in June 1855. The first edition was available, for one dollar, by 12 July 1856 (Lorch 1929, 431). Orion anticipated criticisms from the local press: “Errors in this Directory,” he stated, “apologise for themselves, because the attempt is the first in Keokuk, and it would be a novelty among directories, if there were no mistakes; yet to prevent them neither pains nor labor has been spared. . . . we shall have an opportunity to improve in our next” (OC 1856, preface). Orion published a second edition of the directory in 1857, but profits from it failed to meet expectations because he printed several hundred copies too many (Rees, 401–2).

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3 Apprentice printer Richard Higham, a “good-natured, simple-minded, winning lad of seventeen” (AD, 26 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:251–52). After learning of Higham’s death during the Civil War, Clemens reminisced fondly about him (see 2 Apr 62 to JLC).

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4 Clemens wrote at least one line of the Keokuk City Directory: his own listing, which identified him as “Antiquarian.” In 1888 an unidentified Keokuk “gentleman” remarked that Clemens “claimed the profession of antiquarian because of his researches among the ancient and venerable bugs of the hotel in which he boarded” (reported in Curtis, 1).

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5 Kerr’s father remains unidentified.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).

Previous publication: L1, 63–65; MTB, 1:108–9, excerpt; MTL, 1:32–33, with omissions.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 459–61.

Emendations and textual notes:

the • 52. | the

and manage • a‸nd‸ ma manage [false start ‘ama’ corrected: ‘m’ mended to ‘n’ by ‘d’ written over third arch of ‘m’ and partly formed ‘a’]

do did • doid [‘i’ over ‘o’]

would the • [Clemens inadvertently left out a word following ‘would’, possibly ‘make’, ‘see’, or ‘have’. In MTL Paine emended to ‘would have the’. The sentence is not part of the excerpt in MTB.]

book hands • bokok hands [‘o’ over ‘k’]

drop. • [A word may be missing. For example, Clemens could have meant to write ‘drop them.’ In MTL Paine emended to ‘drop it.’ which seems less likely. The sentence is not part of the excerpt in MTB.]

tw five • [‘fi’ over ‘tw’]

just • [possibly ‘y just’; ‘j’ over ‘y’]

ran • [sic]