To Henry Nason Kinney
22 March 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, postal card, in pencil: Daley, UCCL 00468)

I suffered all of that & so I naturally sympathize with you & the other victims. But I had one consolation to stay & support & hearten me through it all, & that one I offer to you. It was this: The instant that I die, I shall be rid of that nightmare. Therefore—do you perceive?—we have only got to wait. That is all. Nothing is easier.1

Truly Yours

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

us postal card
write the address on this side—the message on the other

Henry Nason Kinney

39 Thayer Hall

Harvard University

Cambridge Mass.

[postmarked:] hartford, conn. mar 22 6 pm

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1Kinney (1856-1900) was a Harvard College undergraduate; he would go on to Andover Theological Seminary and the ministry. Kinney’s and Clemens’s shared “nightmare” was the “Punch, brothers! punch” jingle in “A Literary Nightmare.” On 27 January 1876, soon after that sketch’s publication in the Atlantic Monthly, Howells wrote Clemens that, among other communities devastated by the jingle, “Harvard is full of it” (CU-MARK; see 29 Jan 1876 to Twichell; Harvard University 1914, 181-82; SLC 1876f).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, postal card, in pencil, collection of Robert Daley, seen at Sotheby’s, New York, while awaiting sale in December 1993.

Previous publication:

MicroPUL, reel 1.