To Orion Clemens
29 September 1860 • New Orleans, La.
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00025)

“Alonzo Child,” N. Orleans, Sept. 28th.

Dear Brother:

I just received yours and Mollies letters yesterday—they had been here [ 3 2 ]weeks—forwarded from St Louis. We got here yesterday—will leave at Noon, to-day.1 Of course I have had no time, in 24 hours, to do anything—therefore I‸’ll‸ answer after we are under way again. Yesterday I had many things to do, but Bixby2 and I got with the pilots of two other boats and went off [ disa dissipating ]on a ten dollars dinner at a French restaurant—breathe it not unto Ma!—where we ate Sheep-head-fish with mushrooms, shrimps and oysters—birds—coffee with brandy burnt in it, &c &c,—ate, drank & smoked, from 1 P. M. until 5 o’clock, and then—then—the day was too far gone to do anything.

To-day I ordered the alligator boots—$1200. Will send ’em up next trip. Please find enclosed—and acknowledge receipt of $2000

In haste

Sam. L. Clemens

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens misdated this letter, for New Orleans newspapers show that the Alonzo Child arrived there on 28 September and departed the next day. The regular captain of the Child, which ran in the St. Louis and New Orleans Railroad Line, was David DeHaven (1826–76), who was on duty in September. On many subsequent trips, however, DeHaven was too ill to serve and was replaced by Captain James O’Neal (see 6 Feb 61 to OC and MEC, n. 2). The Child was the last boat that Clemens piloted. One of his two surviving river notebooks contains details of some of the trips he made between November 1860 and March 1861 (see N&J1, 53–56).

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2 Horace E. Bixby, Clemens’s former mentor, was again his fellow pilot.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L1, 102; MTB, 1:155, brief quotation; MTL, 1:48, with omission.

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

Emendations and textual notes:

3 2 • [‘2’ over ‘3’]

disa dissipating • disasipating [second ‘s’ over ‘a’]