To William Bowen
25 January 1868 • New York, N.Y.
(MS: TxU, UCCL 00184)

‸☞ Tell these contents to nobody but Mollie.‸ 1

New York, Jan. [ 24 25].

Dear Will—

I have just come down from Hartford, Conn., where I have made a [tip-top ]contract for a 600-page book, & I feel perfectly jolly. It is with [the ]heaviest publishing house in America, & I get the best terms they have ever offered any man save one.2 The manuscript is to be ready the middle of July. It would take a good deal of money to buy out the s undersigned now, old boy.

I put that postscript at the top of the letter because the above paragraph contains business matters, & they ought always to be kept reasonably dark.

Mr. Bennett of the New York Herald tells me that if I will correspond twice a week from Washington, I may abuse & ridicule anybody & every body I please. Well, I said, “We will just take one drink on that—all I have been wanting, for a year, is to find a paper that will give me room according to my strength—& pay me double price.” He said the Herald would do both. I have two weekly Pacific coast correspondences—I’ll raise on them, also, & write very seldom for the Tribune—& then I’ll sail in & write that book. If it were not for that book, I would just show these newspaper men how easy it is to make a stack of greenbacks every week—but the book is going to crowd me some—I shall have to cut off all outside work, & it is growing pretty lucrative. I could make eight hundred a month so easily if I didn’t have the book to write.

Will, I was ever so sorry to hear of your bereavement3—but at the same time I could not help reflecting that you are still very, very fortunately situated, for you have a most excellent wife—a good, kind, affectionate comrade in all the vicissitudes of life & one who will always prefer rather to overlook your shortcomings than criticise them—a treasure you have long ago learned the value of. I wish I had been as fortunate. To labor to secure the world’s [ pl praise ]or its blame either, seems stale, flat & unprofitable,4 compared with the happiness of achieving the praise or the abuse of a so dear a friend as a wife.

God bless old Bart, I do hope he will come out strong & hearty again.5

I have been thinking of [school-days ]at Dawson’s, & trying to recall the old faces of that ancient time—but I cannot place them very well—they have [ g ]faded out from my treacherous memory, for the most part, & passed away. But I still remember the louse you bought of poor Arch Fuqua. I told about that at a Congressional dinner in Washington the other day, & Lord, how those thieves laughed! It was a gorgeous old reminiscence. I just expect I shall publish it yet, some day.6

But I have a dozen more letters to write, & time presses.

Goodbye, old shipmate.

Forever—

Sam Clemens

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Mary Bowen, Will’s wife.

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2 Clemens mistakenly thought this was Horace Greeley (see 24 Jan 68 to JLC and PAM, n. 4).

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3 Probably the death of the Bowens’ eldest child, Mattie, in September 1867, two months before her eighth birthday (des Cognets, 66).

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4 Hamlet, act 1, scene 2.

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5 Will’s older brother Bart had been injured by scalding steam in a steamboat wreck of unknown date. He failed to recover his health and died on 31 May (Anderson, 91; “Death of a Steamboat Captain,” San Francisco Times, 23 June 68, 1).

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6 Clemens and Bowen both attended the Hannibal school run by John D. Dawson (b. 1812?) from its opening in 1847 until Dawson went to California in 1849. Archibald Fuqua (b. 1833?), another classmate, was the son of a Hannibal tobacco merchant. Clemens and Bowen became so absorbed in teasing the insect bought from Fuqua that they were unaware until too late that schoolmaster Dawson was watching them watch the louse. Clemens first published the incident in chapter 7 of Tom Sawyer, but his earliest known literary use of it occurs in “Boy’s Manuscript,” which he wrote in October or November 1868 but left unpublished (Inds, 317, 319). No report of the “Congressional dinner in Washington” has been found.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin (TxU). On the back of the letter as folded, someone (possibly Bowen himself) has written several sums, in pencil.

Previous publication: L2, 167–168; MTLBowen, 16–18; Davis 1954, brief excerpt.

Provenance:purchased by TxU in 1940 from William Bowen’s daughter, Eva Laura Bowen (Mrs. Louis Knox) (MTLBowen, 7 n. 12, 10).

Emendations and textual notes:

24 25 • 25 4

tip-top • tip-|top

the • the | | the

pl praise • plraise

school-days • school-|days

g • [partly formed]