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Add to My Citations To Henry M. Crane
20 May 1867 • New York, N.Y.
(MS: WU, UCCL 02779)
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westminster hotel, cor. of irving place and
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May 20, 1867.

Henry W. Creal, Esq

I have received your kind note, & would gladly accept your invitation but that I am find myself so pressed for time, now, that I dare not do it.1 My newspaper correspondence has fallen so behindhand in these last few weeks that if I lose a single day I shall not catch up before I leave. A magazine article or two, still unfinished, must be attended to.

I was to have lectured in Brooklyn again, & even hired the Academy of Music, but inexorable duty to my employers in San Francisco compelled me to give the lecture up.

I know Rondout pretty well, through my old shipmate, Kingman,2 & I assure [ th ]you that I am sincerely sorry I cannot get up there this trip.

With many thanks,
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em spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceYrs Truly

Sam. L. Clemens

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Henry W. Creal Esq | Sec’y Lincoln Literary Association | Rondout | N.Y. [postmarked:] new-york may 21 [postage stamp removed] [docketed:] “Mark Twain” | May 1867

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 “Creal” is Clemens’s misreading of Crane’s signature. Crane was a resident of Rondout (now Kingston), New York, and, according to Clemens’s envelope, secretary of the Lincoln Literary Association there. Crane later repeated his invitation, and Clemens eventually lectured in Rondout in 1868, 1870, and 1871 (Fatout, 136, 161).

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2 Hector J. Kingman, late of Reese River, Nevada, was one of Clemens’s fellow passengers on the 1866–67 trip from San Francisco to New York. His connection with Rondout has not been further documented (“Eastward Bound,” San Francisco Alta California, 15 Dec 66, 1; SLC 1867).



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MS, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU).

glyphglyphPrevious publication:glyph L2, 47–48.

glyphglyphProvenance:glyphsee Bassett Collection, p. 511.

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