28 September 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: MoSW, UCCL 00655)
Thank you kindly for the picture of the baby. But it seems to me you did not economise material to the best advantage: there is meat enough in this youngster for twins. You could get your family finished a good deal sooner if you would use more judgment. I wish I could send you a picture of our baby, but I cannot, for the reason that they are all gone.
With the best wishes for you & yours——
Clemens, almost certainly still in Buffalo, did not bother to alter the printed dateline.
Lant wrote to Clemens from St. Louis in 1909:
I have your strikingly philosophical letter to me of September 28, 1871, which remains undiminished in esteem, and indeed, in fact unpublished, which it provokingly deserved to be then and at least twice a year since.
But you have forgotten this and the bunch of a printer who never ceased to adore you from that day to this. He is now in his 69th year and still at the case with unabating joy, amid the racket of monotypes, tinotypes, casting machines and the musical racket of presses on a floor below. (25 Dec 1909, CU-MARK; see also 28 Nov 1869click to open link to Lant)
References
- Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
- 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
MS, William K. Bixby Collection, Washington University, St. Louis (MoSW).
L4 , 461.