To Jacob H. Burrough
1 February 1868 • Washington D.C.
(Typed transcription by or for Albert Bigelow Paine and MS facsimile: CU-MARK and www.eclipsepaper.com, UCCL 12724)

224 F street.

Wash. [1st.]0

Dear Burroughs1—

I have been absent in New York and Hartford for the past ten or twelve days & was glad to find your letter when I got back. It was with 28 others—the other 27 are not answered. I have written 182 note-paper pages of newspaper matter, at a dollar a page, & 7 of magazine stuff at four dollars a page, in the last two days—Oh, no,—I aint a steam engine to work, when I get behindhand, I don’t reckon—“it’s the man in the [wagon,”] as we say in California.2 If I can write as much more in the next two days, I will be all right again. I just want to show them that when I make contracts I am willing to fill them—& then I will throw up all my correspondence except about $75 a week & sail in on my book—because I have made a tip-top, splendid contract with a great publishing house in Hartford for a 600-page volume illustrated—about the size of a Patent Office Report. My percentage is a fifth more than any they have ever paid any man but Horace Greeley—I get what amounts to just about the same he was paid. But this is publishers’ secret—keep it to yourself.

I wish I could see you & talk over old times. Give my love to your 5,3 my dear old boy. I must write & answer some of those other letters. Good bye, lad. [drawing of treble clef with two measures from “Auld Lang Syne”]? Here’s a health & a green memory to the days that are gone!

Always Your friend

Sam L. Clemens

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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0The present text, notes, and apparatus supersede those previously published on MTPO in 2010, that version is available here.

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1Clemens and Jacob H. Burrough (1827–1883) were “comrades and close friends” at a St. Louis boarding house in the early 1850s, when Clemens was a journeyman printer and Burrough a journeyman chairmaker. Clemens remembered that “he was fond of Dickens, Thackeray, Scott & Disraeli, & was the only reading-man in the establishment, & the only one equipped with fine literary appreciations & a sound & competent literary judgment” (14 Dec 1900 to Frank E. Burrough, MoCgS). Burrough later became an attorney in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where he served as a probate judge until his death. Burrough’s letter to Clemens does not survive (N&J1, 37 n. 45; N&J2, 456 n. 72).

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2Clemens earlier used this expression in a June 1863 letter to his family: “it’s probably the ‘gentleman in the wagon!’ (popular slang phrase)” (1 June 1863 to JLC and PAM). A. K. McClure’s Three Thousand Miles through the Rocky Mountains explained: “‘The man in the wagon’ is the author of all sayings and doings which can find no visible or responsible source” (McClure 1869, 211; thanks to Daniel LeCheminant and Lena Ginsburg for providing this source).

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3The five members of Burrough’s family consisted of his wife, Mary (b. 1837), and their children—R. Ida (b. 1859), Emma (b. 1862), Frank (1865–1903), and George (b. 1867) (Household Record 1880; Prosecutor’s Office 2005).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Typed transcription by or for Albert Bigelow Paine, CU-MARK, and MS facsimile, http://www.eclipsepaper.com/gallery/Fgallery2–4.jpg. The Paine transcript, which derives directly from the complete MS, supplies the first portion of the text (‘224 F street . . . to fill them—&’); the partial MS facsimile, which shows only one MS page, supplies the remainder (‘then I will . . . Sam L. Clemens’).

Previous publication:

Provenance:

See Paine Transcripts in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

1st. • 1st. ‸1868‸ [year added by Paine in ink]

wagon,” • ~”,