To James Redpath
12 November 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: MH-H, UCCL 00532)

Buf. 12.

Dear Redpath:

That was all right. I knew you’d print the dispatch—but next morning the little stranger’s health was so precarious that I thought I would try to stop the publication, merely on his mother’s account, for [it ] he was taken away, all printed jokes about him would grate upon her feelings of course. But he seems to be doing pretty well, & so it was perfectly proper to print the message.1

I wish I could be at the Press Club dinner [tonight]. I have sent the boys a dispatch.2 If I happen over to the telegraph office I will answer your letter by telegraph.

Love to you.

Yrs

Mark.

[letter docketed:] boston lyceum bureau. redpath & fall. nov 3 18703 [and] N. Y. | Buffalo | Mark Twain | Nov. 12 ’70

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Apparently Clemens had telegraphed on 9 November, trying to forestall publication of his previous day’s telegram. Neither the 9 November telegram, nor Redpath’s reply, nor the further telegram Clemens promises in the next paragraph is known to survive.

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2 The previous letter.

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3 The bureau’s receipt stamp had not been properly set.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H).

Previous publication: L4, 235–236.

Provenance:bequeathed to MH in 1918 by Evert J. Wendell.

Emendations and textual notes:

it • [sic]

tonight • to-|night