5 May 1870 • Elmira, N.Y. (Transcript: WU, UCCL 00461)
We return home a week hence. We shall go to the Adirondacks with the Twichells. I would have published that bookseller in that New York town if I had remained in Buffalo—but here I only “loaf.”1explanatory note
What went with the Sun paragraph you spoke of? (Your letter was not sealed & it was gone. Ⓐemendation) Was it complimentary, or the reverse? Was it about me? I will bet I will make some of those people sick, yet.2explanatory note
I telegraphed you to send statement & check here—did you get it? I have a bid for a book from a Philada subscription house3explanatory note offering unlimitedly.
Tell me what the Sun paragraph was, sure. Tell me right away.
letter docketed: —70 Ⓐemendation
The unidentified bookseller was probably selling copies of The Innocents Abroad purchased, contrary to company policy, from a subscription agent.
Bliss’s letter is not known to survive. The clipping it enclosed and referred to was probably the following:
A dog, the property of Mr. M—— T——, a well-known writer, afforded on one occasion a remarkable instance of the sagacity of his race. His master was in the habit of giving him two pennies every morning at breakfast time, and sending him to buy a Sun of a newsboy. One morning the boy, having sold all his Suns, offered the dog a Daily Times. But the sagacious animal, knowing his master’s politics, wagged his tail, put out his tongue, and went to a news-shop to buy the needful journal. (“A Knowing Dog,” New York Sun, 30 Apr 70, 2, reprinting the Comic Monthly of unknown date)
The New York Sun, edited by Charles A. Dana, was a lively, somewhat sensational paper with increasingly conservative sympathies. The more staid New York Times, edited by Louis J. Jennings, was, like the Buffalo Express, a reformist Republican paper (Rowell, 692, 699; Mott 1950, 374–78, 382–84).
Unidentified.
References
- Madison Memorial Union Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 4: 1870–1871. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1995
- Hill, Hamlin, ed. Mark Twain’s Letters to His Publishers, 1867–1894. Edited by Hamlin Hill. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1967
- Rowell, George P. The Men Who Advertise; American Newspaper RateBook; Geo. P. Rowell & Company.’s American Newspaper Directory. New York: Nelson Chesman and George P. Rowell and Co. 1870
- Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 260 Years, 1690 to 1950. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan Company. 1950
Transcript, handwritten by Dana Ayer, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU).
L4 , 125–126; MTLP , 36 n. 1, brief excerpt.
The MS evidently remained among the American Publishing Company’s files until it was sold (and may have been at that time copied by Ayer; see Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance). Its present location is not known. The Ayer transcription was in turn copied by a typist and both the handwritten and typed transcriptions are at WU.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.