To James R. Osgood
30 March 1881 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: NN-BGC, UCCL 02551)

Hartford Mch 30/81.

My Dear Osgood—

Yes, must have nice pictures, & a generous sufficientcy of them, too. Make the limit the figure you suggest—$2,800.

Please send me the enclosed dam book. Got the others. Much obliged.

Howells don’t seem to have no taste. The Earl’s literary excrement charmed me like Fanny Hill. I just wallowed in it. I do not think you ought to publish it yourself, but I do think you g ought to use your influence with [Aldrich. But] you never will. You are as dainty & effeminate as Howells; so I know perfectly well that you will simply urinate on the Earl’s MS & send it back to him without further ‸other‸ comment. It is what Howells used to do with poems of sentiment when I sent him any.

Truly Yrs

S L Clemens

[written on back of letter as folded:]

I returned Earl’s MS to you today.

Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, NN-BGC.

Previous publication:

MTLP, 135–36.

Provenance:

Sometime before 1939 the MS was purchased by businessman William T. H. Howe (1874–1939); in 1940 Dr. Albert A. Berg bought and donated the Howe Collection to NN.

Emendations and textual notes:

Aldrich. But • ~.— | ~