To Frank Fuller
2 December 1867 • Washington, D.C.
(MS: PBL, UCCL 00167)

[Washngton], Dec. 2.

Dear Gov—

I want you to r write my next lecture. You can do it better than I.

Keep California in your mind—2 lectures—both repeated in San Francisco—[delivered ]once each in Sac. & Va. City—not elsewhere. I know. I have been there. The [other ]places are not worth $20 apiece hardly, when you average them. Va. isn’t very good, for the Alta copy-righted the letters & the Enterprise couldn’t publish.1 Next

The American Publishing Co. of Hartford want a book. They published for Richardson. I have written them to state just what they want, when they want it, & how much bucksheesh? That was business, wasn’t it? I thought so. Their house is a very live concern.

Yrs always,

Sam. L. Clemens
Address–– Tribune Bureau
Washington

If you know of any villainy here that has money in it, let me know.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 On 12 August 1867, Frederick MacCrellish and Company registered its copyright for “The Holy Land Excursion | Mark Twains Letters” (DLC). This unusual step was probably effective in discouraging the Alta’s exchanges from reprinting all of Clemens’s letters, even though many reprinted selections from them: the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, the San Rafael (Calif.) Marin County Journal, the San Francisco California Weekly Mercury, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Sacramento Union, to name only a few.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Robert B. Honeyman Collection, Linderman Library, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa. (PBL).

Previous publication: L2, 124.

Provenance:The Honeyman Collection, which contains eleven Clemens letters written between 1867 and 1897, was deposited at PBL in March 1957. See also Brownell Collection, pp. 509–11.

Emendations and textual notes:

Washngton • [sic]

delivered • [first ‘e’ dotted as ‘i’, then dot deleted]

other • othrer [‘r’ mended to ‘e’]