To Jane Lampton Clemens and Family
25 November 1867 • Washington, D.C.
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00162)

‸P.S.—I room with Bill Stewart & board at Willard’s Hotel.‸ 1

Wash, Nov. 25

Dear Folks—

Tired & sleepy—been in Congress all day & making newspaper acquaintances. Stewart is to look up a clerkship in the Patent Office for Orion—things necessarily move slowly where there are ‸is‸ so much business & such armies of office-seekers to be attended to. I guess it will be all right. I intend it shall be all right.2

I have 18 invitations to lecture, at $100 each, in various parts of the Union—have declined them all.3 I am for business, now.

Belong on the Tribune staff, & shall write occasionally. Am offered the same berth to-day on the Herald by letter. Shall write Mr. Bennett & accept, as soon as I hear from Tribune that it will not interfere.4 Am pretty well known, now—intend to be better known. Am hob-nobbing with these old Generals & Senators & other humbugs for no good purpose.5 Don’t have any more trouble making friends than I did in California. All serene. Good-bye. ‸Shall continue on the “Alta.”‸

Yrs aff’ly Sam.
224 F. cor. 14th.

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Willard’s was on Pennsylvania Avenue at the northwest corner of Fourteenth Street West, less than a block from Stewart’s and Clemens’s rooms, and across the street from the Washington bureau of the Tribune, which was at 470 Fourteenth Street West. Refurbished and renamed in 1847 from the old City Hotel, it was a fashionable gathering place for Washington society (Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, 2:445 n. 1; Marbut, 136; Poore, 97).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 In 1867 the Patent Office in Washington employed ninety-three clerks and temporary clerks at yearly salaries ranging from $1,000 to $1,600 (Interior Department, 151–52). See also 9 Jan 68 and 24 Jan 68, both to JLC and PAM.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 See 24 Nov 67 to Fuller.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

4 See 25 Nov 67 to Webb, n. 2.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

5 The surviving documents do not establish which “old Generals & Senators & other humbugs” Clemens encountered between 22 November and the date of this letter. On 21 November the Senate began to meet in a special extension of the first session, adjourning on 2 December, the same day the second regular session of the Fortieth Congress convened.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L2, 116–117; MTB, 1:346–47; Davis 1954, excerpt.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.