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To James D. Randall
February 1877 • Unknown place
(Paraphrase and transcript: Cincinnati Gazette, 27 February 1877, UCCL 13532)

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The steamer Mark Twain is now running from Helena to the [cut-off], forty-five miles above that point, on the St. Francis River.1 As soon as the stage of the river will permit, she will proceed to the Sunk Lands regions on the upper St. Francis River.2 Her [namesake], whose proper name is Samuel L. Clemens, recently sent the boat his photo and his autograph. In a private letter to Capt. Randall, Mark says: “There has been good luck in the name these ten years. Let us hope it will continue.”

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1James D. Randall (d. 1901) was the owner and captain of the Mark Twain, a steamboat which, starting in early February 1877, served as a mail packet on the St. Francis River, a tributary of the Mississippi in southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas. In 1885 the Mark Twain exploded, killing six people (“River News,” Cincinnati Gazette, 28 Dec 1876, 7; “Arrivals and Departures,” Evansville [Ind.] Courier and Press, 3 Feb 1877, 3; “River Intelligence,” Memphis [Tenn.] Public Ledger, 7 Feb 1877, 4; “A Steamer Explosion,” Chicago Tribune, 28 May 1885, 3; Reilly and Thomas 1883, 101; “James D. Randall,” Western Electrician 29 [6 July 1901]: 7).

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2The “sunk” or “sunken” lands were areas in northeastern Arkansas that shifted and sank during the New Madrid, Missouri, earthquakes of 1811–12 (Hendricks 2017).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Paraphrase and transcript, “Miscellany,” Cincinnati Gazette, 27 February 1877, 7, reprinting the Memphis Avalanche of unknown date.

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

cut-off • cut- | off

namesake • namesame