To Olivia L. Clemens
17 May 1877 • New York, N.Y.
(MS, correspondence cards, in pencil: CU-MARK, UCCL 01433)

slcThursday.

Livy darling, it is 8.30 AM & Joe & I have been wandering about for half an hour with satchels & overcoats, asking questions of policemen; at last we have found the eating house I was after. Joe’s country aspect & the seal-skin coat caused one policemen to follow us a few blocks. He talked s to somebody then & disappeared—so I judge we are “shadowed” & shall be in the station house presently.1

I thought of you all night, my darling, on account of the lightning—& especially that time the thunder crashed so. When on my way to Joe’s house I was sorry I did not leave instructions with Lizzie or Mary to go to your room in case it thundered.2 I do hope you are having a good rest this morning, & that dear old Sue3 will soon be with you.

We shall loaf around to Mr. Sage’s business place, presently.4 O, the market! We have passed by such mountains of delicacies this morning. Breakfast is here, piping hot!—so goodbye [sweetheart]—shall send another card by & by.

Sam

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Hartford | [Conn] [postmarked:] new york may 17 1130am

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1Clemens and Twichell had gone by night boat from New Haven to New York on 16 May and sailed for Bermuda aboard the S.S. Bermuda the following afternoon. While in New York, Clemens recorded the details of Twichell’s embarrassingly provincial behavior in his notebook (N&J2, 9, 13–16, 32).

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2Olivia Clemens’s fear of thunder and lightning evidently was the prompt for Clemens’s story “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning,” published in the Atlantic Monthly for September 1880 (SLC 1880d). In it, a wife with a hysterical fear of lightning incites her husband to take a series of ridiculous safety precautions. For Lizzy and Mary, two of the Clemenses’ servants, see 17 July 1877 to OLC, n. 2.

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3Susan Crane.

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4The offices, at 67 Wall Street, of H. W. Sage and Company, the lumber firm owned by the family of Dean Sage (Goulding 1876, 234).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, correspondence cards, in pencil, CU-MARK.

Previous publication:

LLMT, 195; MicroML, reel 4.

Provenance:

See Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

sweetheart • sweet- | heart

Conn • Con[◊] [torn away]