To Daniel Webster Wilder
2 November 1881 • Hartford, Conn.
(Transcript by Webster Wilder, Sr., correspondence card: CU-MARK, UCCL 02082)
Hartford, Nov. 2/81.
I have just received the Herald, for which please accept my thanks. I shall be a resident of Canada when the book issues there, & shall take the other measures required by the Dominion laws to secure Canadian copyright. Pity a book isn’t a machine: because a body could patent it, then, up yonder, & save the time & expense of that wintry jour journey.
Ys truly
S L Clemens
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MicroPUL, reel 2.
Provenance:
In 1947, the original MS was owned by Webster Wilder, Sr. He inherited it in 1911 after the death of his father, Daniel Webster Wilder, who was in 1881 the sole editor and part-owner of the St. Joseph (Mo.) Herald. Wilder suggests that “it is evident the card [was] mailed within an envelope addressed to the Herald and not to father personally” (Wilder, Sr., to Dixon Wecter, 20 Sept 1947, CU-MARK).
Emendations and textual notes:
slc • (In Upper Left Hand Corner) (“S. L. C.” monogram in Lavender Ink.) [reported, not quoted]
