Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To James Redpath and George L. Fall
7 March 1872 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: MH-H, UCCL 00731)

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Home Mch. 7.

Dear Afflicted:

Fall does the carbuncles, Redpath does the boils—hire me to do an abscess & Nasby a tumor, or a wen, or something picturesque, like a goitre, for instance, & let’s g open the Lyceum Course at Music Hall1 with an exhibition, with appropriate music & a cold lunch. It would be the sensation of the season., if Redpath’s boils are [ happily ] ‸strikingly‸ situated. We could get some surgeon to take the baton & lecture while the panorama moves.

But we must come down to the serious affairs of life. I dock your bill about $25 to feed [ fe fat] an ancient grudge I bear2 the Bureau! To get from Columbus, Ohio, to the next awfully out-of-the-way place, I had to hire a locomotive & pay $75 for it.3 If the Fall had adhered to my written stipulations that next place wouldn’t have been in my list at all. So I divide up the expense & make you pay a third of it, though my conscience continually urges me to mulct you the full amount, every time I think of the vexation, the profanity & the unspeakable indignation of that long day & the talking to the dullest & stupidest of audiences that memorable night. A place so out of the way that my usual telegraphing cost me $18 that day!

Enclosed please find check for $260 instead of $284.31.

But Lord bless you, being now avenged & satisfied, I will harbor vindictuitude no longer, but upon rep receipt of notice that this course is considered unkind & wrongful treatment by you, will hasten to forward the additional $24.31 immediately at once without delay.4

Ys ever

Samℓ. L. Clemens.