To Frank Fuller
5 December 1867 • Washington, D.C.
(MS: CtY-BR, UCCL 00170)

Dear Gov—

You hit powerful hard, but Lord, I can forgive. We can’t tell anything about business, till we talk face to face—because, you know, I don’t know whether you will want an eighth a quarter, or a half, or all the money—because you got it all in New York, you remember. (That’s one.)1

I dread the idea of appearing before those miners of Montana, or those Mormons of Salt Lake. I don’t believe I can do it. Another devilish thing is that the Alta copyrighted the letters—that was rough—they know me less, everywhere west of the [Missippi], now, than they did before—I have not been copied. I am good for 3 nights in San F., 1 in Sac., 2 in Va, & 1 in Carson—that is all I can swear to. It is all I would attempt, on the coast. Maybe we can make it pay two of us.—maybe we can’t. But for your overweening pride, we could—for you could keep door & peddle photographs—but not of yourself, for God Almighty’s sake. (That’s two.) {And on 2 I rest my rebuttal.}

I do write two ‸too‸ good a hand for a Senator, but I am practising hard & improving fast—I do it worse & worse every day. I can frank letters, now, very well, with that signature; yesterday I drew my first stationery, & did it without detection; in ten days more I hope to be able to collct collect little dabs of mileage on it, & such things.2

Come! hurry down here—I want to swap lies & business both, with you. I shan’t swindle you if I can keep nature down. Perhaps you can make it appear that the children of the Plains are crying for me. I think so, because you can make a corn-sheller appear well that won’t shell any corn. (That’s three for you. I rest my case.)

Yrs ever

Mark.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Fuller recalled of Clemens’s 6 May debut at Cooper Union, “The expense of the lecture was a little over $600; the receipts were not quite $300” (Fuller, 5:10).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 The congressional privilege of franking mail with a member’s signature was so widely abused that in 1873 it was abolished altogether and not fully restored until 1895 (Alexander W. Randall, 30–31; Cullinan, 59, 86, 258). See Clemens’s letter of 9 January 1868 to his family for a reproduction of an envelope he franked with Stewart’s name. On 20 December 1867 Clemens wrote in his Enterprise letter:

I wrote an order for four reams of fancy foolscap and got a blind lunatic to sign Charles Sumner’s name to it (no man can counterfeit the genuine signature unless there is something awful the matter with him), and went up to the Senate and presented it. They said it would not do. I asked if they meant to insinuate anything against the soundness of the signature. They said no; they could see by the general horribleness of it that some member of Congress wrote it. (SLC 1868 [MT00609])

On 2 December he wrote “The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation” for the Tribune (published on 27 December), satirizing—among other things—the practice among territorial delegates of charging for mileage “both ways, although they never go back when they get here once,” and claiming to have submitted a bill to the government requesting $2,800 compensation for “Mileage to and from Jerusalem via Egypt, Algiers, Gibraltar, and Cadiz, 14,000 miles, at 20c. a mile” (SLC 1867 [MT00600]).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Willard S. Morse Collection, Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR).

Previous publication: L2, 128–129; Cyril Clemens, 16–17, with alterations; Kaplan, 59, excerpt.

Provenance:donated to CtY-BR in 1942 by Walter F. Frear.

Emendations and textual notes:

Missippi • [sic]