To Pamela A. Moffett
28 June 1875 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01244)

Hartford, June 28.

My Dear Sister:

Livy has been confined to her room, & part of the time to her bed, for the past week, but is around again, now. This has persuaded her to go to Newport for August & part of September—so the sickness has been a good thing on the whole. We shall take both children & two nurses.

Yesterday while I was at church the wet nurse let the baby get hurt. She pushed (or possibly Susie) pushed the top of the baby carriage forward heedlessly from behind & caught the baby’s middle finger, nipping the end of it nearly off. The blood flowed like a small river & scared everybody badly. But the coachman caught up the child & bound tobacco about the wound with Margaret’s help & stopped the blood. The doctor was called,1 who sewed up & bandaged the2

{. . . .}

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1 The cast of this drama included Rosina Hay, Susy’s nurse; Maria McLaughlin, Clara’s wet nurse; coachman Patrick McAleer; and Margaret Cosgrave, the family cook. The doctor probably was Cincinnatus Taft or his partner, Pierre Starr.

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2 This letter fragment fills both sides of a single sheet; the number of sheets now missing is not known. Pamela Moffett used the margins for an undated letter to her mother and son, who were visiting relatives in Louisville, Kentucky:

Ma why do not you and Sammy write? The last news we had from you was S’s letter in the Student and that was written a good deal over a week ago. Sammy I like your style for newspaper correspondence. I sent you the Censor with a Morning directed to aunt Mary Saunders. The temperance pieces were for her. I sent the papers to aunt Mary but I thought she would n’t care for the local.

Mary Saunders was Clemens’s paternal aunt. Fredonia, New York, was a center of the temperance movement, in which Pamela Moffett participated, and the Censor, the local newspaper, published a semi-regular “Temperance Column” as well as occasional related stories on the subject. The Student was presumably a Kentucky periodical, not further identified (PAM to MEC, 25 May 75, CU-MARK).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L6, 501–502.

Provenance:see Moffett Collection in Description of Provenance.