To Joseph H. Twichell
3 January 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: Craven, UCCL 00554)

Buf., 2 3d.

Dear J H—

I tell you it is [ perfectly ] magnificent!——rich, delicious, me fascinating, brim full of meat.—the humor is transcends anything I have seen in print or heard from a stage this many a day.—& every page glitters like a cluster-pin with many-sided gems of [fancy—Warner’s ]book I mean—it is [splendid.1 But] I haven’t dressed yet—the barber is waiting to shave me, Livy & the rest of the family2 are clamoring for breakfast & it does seem that a body can’t sit down in his shirt-tail to drop a friendly line to a friend without all the elements “going for” him.

All well here. Hope same to you & yrs. Happy N. Y.r & all that.

Gd bye—

Ys

Mark

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Twichell had told Clemens in December about My Summer in a Garden, which gathered Charles Dudley Warner’s humorous essays about a small farm, previously published in the Hartford Courant. Warner’s first book, it was an immediate success, selling out the first printing by mid-December, within three weeks of publication (19 Dec 70 to Twichell; Lounsbury, xiv–xvi; Hartford Courant: advertisement, 28 Nov 70, 2; “Brief Mention,” 17 Dec 70, 2).

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2 Including Olivia Lewis Langdon, who had arrived for a visit of nearly two months in late November 1870 (19 Nov 70 to Olivia Lewis Langdon; 20 Nov 70 to Charles J. Langdon; 25 Jan 71 to Day).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, collection of Mrs. Robin Craven.

Previous publication: L4, 294; Parke-Bernet 1945, lot 90, excerpt.

Provenance:In or after 1945, the MS was acquired by Mrs. Craven’s father, Sidney L. Krauss.

Emendations and textual notes:

perfectly • [false ascenders/descenders]

fancy—Warner’s • fancy—|—Warner’s

splendid. But • splendid.—|But