8 November 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (Boston Morning Journal, 9 Nov 70, UCCL 00528)
A son was born to me yesterday, &Ⓐemendation with the true family instinct he has gone to lecturing already. His subject is the same as Josh Billings’s—“Milk.”1explanatory note You are hereby constituted his agent, & instructed to make arrangements with Lyceums.2explanatory note
This popular lecture, sometimes called “Milk and Natral Histry,” was a rambling discourse in which Billings made only teasing reference to his nominal subject ( L3 , 397 n. 3; Kesterson, 109–12, 117–18).
The Boston Morning Journal published the telegram with the following preface:
The Ruling Passion Strong in—Birth. The Boston Lyceum Bureau has just received the following telegram, dated Buffalo, Nov. 8, from the famous humorist and lecturer, Mark Twain: (“Boston and Vicinity,” 9 Nov 70, 2)
For details of the telegram’s reprinting, see the textual commentary.
References
- 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
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 3: 1869. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Dahlia Armon. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1992
- Kesterson, David B. Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw). Twayne’s United States Authors Series, edited by Sylvia E. Bowman, no. 229. New York: Twayne Publishers. 1973
“Boston and Vicinity,” Boston Morning Journal, 9 Nov 70, 2. The printings noted below all evidently derive from the copy-text.
L4 , 227; “Local Intelligence,” Boston Evening Transcript, 9 Nov 20, 2; “Local Matters,” Boston Advertiser, 10 Nov 70, 1; “Personal,” Hartford Courant, 11 Nov 70, 2; “Personal,” New York World, 11 Nov 70, 5 (clipping in Olivia Clemens’s Commonplace Book, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley [CU-MARK]); “Brief Mention,” Hartford Times, 14 Nov 70, 1, in addition to the copy-text.