To Jane Lampton Clemens and Family
26? March 1869 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS facsimile: Davis, UCCL 00285)

[first six MS pages (about 750 words) missing]

of it, for you know it is not good judgment,) ‸Orion on the same paper,‸ & then we could be all come-atable.1

My head is so busted up with endeavors to get my owns plans straight, that I am hardly in a condition to fix up anybody else’s. Livy & I sit for [ hours— ] I don’t know whether I am going to California in May—I don’t know whether I want to lecture next season or not—I don’t know whether I want to yield to Nasby’s persuasions & go with him on the Toledo Blade—I don’t know anything.2 I am too happy & comfortable & sleepy, now, to know anything. And I don’t care a dam. [{I ] mean a mill dam, of course—for I have not been a profane man for 2 years—(but between you & I, I put that “don’t care a dam” in, solely for Livy’s benefit, for I knew perfectly well that she had crept up behind me at that moment & was looking over my shoulders—but you bet you she’s gone off, now!) I ought not to tease her & “sell” her so much, but I can’t easily help it, & she is as long-suffering as any Job & patient as any Job. She is almost perfection—I solemnly swear to that. I never have discovered a fault in her yet, or any sign or shadow of a blemish.3 And I must inform you that I sing her praises in a weaker key than any other friend she has. Good-bye. Love to you all.

Affectionately

Sam.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Someone in Clemens’s family had evidently suggested that his brother Orion could get a job on whatever newspaper Clemens joined. Orion was presently living in St. Louis (see 14 Jan 69 to PAM, n. 8), but it is not known if or where he was employed.

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2 Two weeks earlier, Clemens had been determined to refuse Nasby’s offer: see 10 Mar 69 to OLL and CJL, p. 159. Although the date of this letter remains uncertain, it was written on the same stationery used in the next letter, to Elisha Bliss, the only other letter in this period to use it. In addition, Clemens clearly wrote to his mother on or about 26 March, for her notebook record of payments from him lists payment number 12 ($20) as received on 30 March (JLC, 4).

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3 But see 23 and 24 Jan 69 to OLL.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, but in 1977 Chester L. Davis, Sr., then executive secretary of the Mark Twain Research Foundation in Perry, Mo., provided a photocopy to the Mark Twain Papers. The surviving MS consists of one leaf, numbered “7” on the recto and unnumbered on the verso. The first three leaves (pages 1–6) are missing. The paper is the same Langdon stationery that Clemens used in his 30 March letter to Elisha Bliss (see the next commentary). The ink (described as “pinkish” by Wecter on the typescript) was probably purple—the same bluish violet shade Clemens used in Elmira throughout 1869 and until mid-1877 in letters and manuscripts (see P&P, 455).

Previous publication: L3, 177–178; LLMT, 85, with omission; Davis 1977.

Provenance:The MS was evidently returned to Clemens by Pamela Moffett, for it survived in the Samossoud Collection at least until 1947: sometime between then and 1949 Dixon Wecter saw it and had a typescript made. Davis afterwards acquired the MS directly from Clara Clemens Samossoud (see Samossoud Collection, p. 586).

Emendations and textual notes:

hours— • [deletion of dash implied]

{I • [no closing bracket]