To Mary Mason Fairbanks
9 February 1868 • Washington, D.C.
(MS: CSmH, UCCL 00191)

My Dear Mother—

Glory, I have found it! I have found your long-lost letter—the best one you ever wrote me. It was in my pocket all the time—placed, for greater security, along with my sister’s photograph, in an envelop about four years old. They have written to me several times to know how I like her picture, & I have been dodging that question with masterpieces of ingenuity that filled me with admiration but kept me in a state of constant worry. Sometimes I was almost driven to come right out with the truth & say I had lost it. And I just expected to “catch it” from you, too. “Catch it” is slang, but it is of the mild sort—I am tapering off with the fullest satisfaction to myself.

I am sick in bed, & have been, for four or five days; but I am so glad I found that letter that I am very well able to sit up & write. I am glad, & grateful, to be placed upon your list of friends, for I honor & esteem you more than I can tell. I am bound to wander out of the straight path & do outrageous things, occasionally, & I believe I have got a genuinely bad heart ‸anyhow‸—but in the course of time I will get some of the badness out of it or break it.

. . . .

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens had presumably just moved to this address, possibly from 356 C Street North, which he had given as the return address of his 15 January letter to Webb. It is also possible that he left the C Street address when he went to New York and Hartford in January, and then stayed again briefly with Senator Stewart at 224 F Street North upon his return to Washington. On 21 February he would tell his family that he had moved five times since leaving Stewart’s rooms, but only the C Street address and 76 Indiana Avenue—his current address—are known. Because he was moving frequently throughout this period, Clemens sometimes used 224 F Street for his return address, on the assumption that he could always collect his mail from Stewart, who still lived there.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (CSmH, call no. HM 14222). The MS, a single leaf inscribed on both sides and unsigned, is almost certainly incomplete.

Previous publication: L2, 180–181; MTMF, 17–18.

Provenance:see Huntington Library, p. 512.