To
Orion and Mary E. (Mollie) Clemens
13 December 1865 • San Francisco, Calif.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00093)
‸Send the memoranda at once.‸
San F. Dec. 13. Wednes.
My Dear Bro.
I have just made a proposition to an old friend of mine—a “rustler,” an energetic, [ untr untiring ]business man & a man of capital & large [ n New ]York business associations & facilities. He [ lev leaves ]for the east 5 days hence—on the 19th. I told him we had 30,000 acres land in Tennessee, & there was oil on [it.—]& if he would send me $500 from New York to go east with, $500 more after I got there, & pay all my expenses while I assisted him in selling the land, I would give him one-half of the entire proceeds of the sale of the land.
Herman Camp offered me half, 2 years ago, if I would go with him to New York & help him sell some [mining ]claims, & I, like a fool, refused. He went, & made $270,000 [ o in ]two months. He is independent, now, & I had to make him a liberal offer. Men from New York tell me that Camp’s mines have given better satisfaction than any that were sold in that market; he was shrewd enough to sell them well.1
Now I don’t want that Tenn land to go for taxes, & I don’t want any “slouch” to take charge of the sale of it. I am tired being a beggar—tired being chained to this accursed homeless desert,—I want to go back to a Christian land once more—& so I want you to send me immediately all necessary memoranda to enable Camp to understand the condition, & quantity & resources of the land, & how he must go about finding it. He will visit St Louis & talk with the folks, & then go at once & see the land, & telegraph me whether he closes with my proposition or not. Write me these particulars at once, as he [ la leaves ]on the 19th. Send letters of introduction to me for him—to dwellers on the Tenn. land who can assist in showing him over it. He says the land is valuable now that there is peace & no slavery, even if it have no oil in it.2
Dear Mollie—It keeps raining, so we can’t go shopping, Mrs. B.3 being unwell. Hold on a day or two.
Yrs Bro
Sam
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
He agreed to buy our Tennessee land for two hundred thousand dollars,
pay a part of the amount in cash and give long notes for the rest.
His scheme was to import foreigners from grape-growing and
wine-making districts in Europe, settle them on the land, and turn
it into a wine-growing country. . . . I sent the contracts and
things to Orion for his signature, he being one of the three heirs.
But they arrived at a bad time—in a doubly bad time, in
fact. The temperance virtue was temporarily upon him in strong
force, and he wrote and said that he would not be a party to
debauching the country with wine. Also he said how could he know
whether Mr. Camp was going to deal fairly and honestly with those
poor people from Europe or not?—and so, without waiting
to find out, he quashed the whole trade, and there it fell, never to
be brought to life again. The land, from being suddenly worth two
hundred thousand dollars, became as suddenly worth what it was
before—nothing, and taxes to pay. (AD, 5 Apr 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:320–21)
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L1, 326–327.
Provenance:probably Moffett Collection; see p. 462.
Emendations and textual notes:
untr untiring • untriring [‘i’ over ‘r’]
n New • [‘N’ over ‘n’]
lev leaves • levaves [‘a’ over ‘v’]
it.— • [dash over period]
mining • mii-|ning [hyphen over ‘i’]
o in • [‘i’ over ‘o’]
la leaves • laeaves [‘e’ over ‘a’]
