Buf. 5th.
My Dear Bro:
Pamela said the other day that if you only had easy work at $100 a month, no night work, [ plent ] liberty after supper to rest & work at your machine, it was about what was required.1 I could give you an editor’s berth on the paper, but it would be night work—so I wrote my publisher to look around & see if he had any work indoors that you could do for $100 a month.—for I knew he had no high-priced employments—one girl is all he needs in the office.2
—I mean by proving yourself[ indispensable—
]& that is the only way terms on which an ambitious man a man ought to want preferment. You will
probably have precious little work to do on a monthly sheet, but it the work can be done all the better for
that.—& besides, it gives the machine a chance. I desire that you throw up that
cursed night work & take this editorship & conduct it so well that editorships will assail
you at the end of a year. It is an easy thing to do. Bliss offered me in effect $4,000 a year to edit take this
berth he offers you—& so he has confidence in his little undertaking.3 He [
sh
] is shrewdly counting on two things, now—one is, by creating a position for you, he will keep me from
“whoring after strange gods,”4 which is Scripture for deserting to other publishers; &, 2d, get an occasional article
out of me for the paper, a thing which would be exceedingly occasional otherwise. He is wise. He is one of the
smartest business men in America, & I am only a dullard when I try to pierce conceive all
the advantages he expects to derive from having you in the employ of the Am. Pub. Co. But all right—I am willing.
Only I know this—that if you take this place, with an air of perfect confidence in yourself, never
once letting anything show in your bearing but a quiet, modest, entire & perfect confidence in your ability to do pretty much anything in the world, Bliss will think you are the very man he needs—but don’t show any shadow of timidity or unsoldierly diffidence, for that sort of thing is fatal to advancement. I warn
you [
this thus ] because you are naturally given to knocking your pot over in this way when a little judicious conduct would make it boil. And I
am writing all this about a matter situation of apparently precious little consequence
fidence because
I am looking at the possibilities of the place, not the place itself & its meagre salary.
Whenever you are ready to come, write me & I will send $100 to pay your passages to
Fredonia—for we probably cannot receive anybody for a month or two—I am trying to keep
Livy’s mother away, & have telegraphed her brother not to come—(he meant to
stay over Sunday.) Livy narrowly escaped miscarriage a fortnight ago. I have moved her—
I should think that if Pamela remains here you might leave Mollie at Fredonia till you go to Hartford & get things ready & then write for her to follow.
I have told Bliss positively that you are an able editor & I don’t want you by word or gesture to show any lack of confidence or any diffidence about assuming responsibility. This will seal his confidence, sure.
Yr Bro.
Sam.
[enclosure:]
Htf. Nov. 2. 70
Dear Twain
Yours recd Yes I got your article. “It is accepted” (a. la. N.Y. Ledger) 6 Thanks for same—
Paper will be out last of the month— 7
How would your Bro. do for an editor of it—?
Would he be satisfied with $100. per month for present, until we could do better by him—?—
You see we have no real place just now for him, but would like for your sake to create a position for him, if possible—would this do? perhaps if here by & by we
could see some opening which would pay good—
{I guess he has an “it is safe to trust him to find “openings” if
enoug if you & he get along well together.}
Say! Is he anything like his younger brother—?
When does he want to leave St Louis.?
Tell me what you want, &, what you think about it &c &c—
Truly
Bliss
P. S. Maybe Bliss isn’t ready for you immediately—shall hear from him again in 2 or 3 days.
Sam.
Bliss is the very livest kind of a Yankee business [man. Don’t ] reveal anything to him about your main, big machine, but at the proper time —a thing
which you inventors never are worth a cent at attempting.
Sam.
You don’t want a European patent—it isn’t worth [fifteen ] cents.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
We had a visitor in the house and when she was leaving she wanted Mrs. Clemens to go to the station with her. I
objected. But this was a visitor whose desire Mrs. Clemens regarded as law. The visitor wasted so much precious time in taking her
leave that Patrick had to drive in a gallop to get to the station in time. In those days the streets of Buffalo were not the model
streets which they afterward became. They were paved with large cobblestones, and had not been repaired since Columbus’s
time. Therefore the journey to the station was like the Channel passage in a storm. The result to Mrs. Clemens was a premature
confinement, followed by a dangerous illness. (AD, 15 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE, 249–50) The departing guest almost certainly was Mary Mason Fairbanks. Clemens’s letters to her of 13 October
and 5 November indicate that she visited Buffalo sometime between those dates. Moreover, the “gallop” to the
depot—with Langdon Clemens’s arrival nearly coming, as Clemens told the Twichells, “that
night”—must have occurred no later than 19 October, since the baby was “staved off” and
“missed the earthquake” that struck the following morning.
Copy-text:MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV), is copy-text for ‘Buf. . . . And’ (219.11–220.29); and
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), is copy-text for ‘I am . . . Sam.’ and for the enclosed letter of 2 Nov
70 from Bliss to Clemens, with Clemens’s added notes to Orion (220.30–221.13 and 221.14–222.5).Previous publication:
L4, 219–22; NPV text: MTB, 1:425, brief excerpt; MTBus, 115–16; Chester L. Davis 1978, 2, brief excerpt; enclosure;
MTLP, 42 n. 1, excerpt.
Provenance:See McKinney Family Papers and Moffett Collection in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
plent • [‘t’ partly formed]
indispensable—
•
indispensable——
sh • [‘h’ partly formed]
this thus • thisus [‘i’ partly formed]
dem deny • demny
man. Don’t • man.—ǀDon’t
fifteen • fifteeen
