To Henry M. Crane
21 August 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: ViU, UCCL 00338)

buffalo, Aug. 21 186 9.

My Dear Crane—

I did hope to lecture for you, but I can’t.1 I am sorry, but the thing can’t be helped. I have already taken a newspaper & am going to take a wife—& that s is enough to look after for the present. I am under contract to lecture in New England, but have written [to-day] to ask to be [ exp excused], & no doubt I shall be.2

Have heard from Kingston,3 but cannot talk there either.

Sincerely

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Crane (1838–1927), a bookkeeper, had been (and probably still was) secretary of the Lincoln Literary Association, of Rondout, New York, for which Clemens had delivered his “American Vandal Abroad” lecture on 2 December 1868 (Ulster County Directory, 239; Crane family monument, Montrepose Cemetery, Kingston, N. Y., information courtesy of Amanda C. Jones; L2, 47–48, 247 n. 3, 262).

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2 Clemens had already written James Redpath on 14 August to “beg off.” Redpath’s response, now lost, must have urged him to reconsider. Clemens’s letter of 21 August, doubtless more emphatic, is not known to survive.

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3 See the previous letter.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).

Previous publication: L3, 315–316; Collector (October 1948), lot M 1956, excerpt.

Provenance:sold by Walter R. Benjamin Autographs in 1948; deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963.

Emendations and textual notes:

to-day • to-|day

exp excused • expcused