28 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: VtMiM, UCCL 01070)
Dialect is your forte, not logic, by my Ⓐemendation my boy. You get up a painstaking & excellent argument to show that if it weren’t for me, {& it’s mighty complimentary, I grant you,} you couldn’t follow your lucrative lecturing, but would have to retire er from the platform.; that you use my stuff with happy effect & that it proves a kind of inexhaustible bank account to you. And then upon from that able argument you draw the curious deduction that all this places me in your debt! My God, what a light the law has lost in you, my boy!1explanatory note
But chaff aside, old friend, I can’t do the thing you wish me to do. I am buried up to the eyes in work, & that work is standing still; for my wife is ill & has been for some little time; we have to deny ourselves & close the house against all visitors. I am just waiting & watching for a time when I may venture to remove my tribe to Elmira, N. Y., for the summer & get away from the cares & worries of housekeeping. When I do get to work again I shall know how to make the most of the minutes.
Hope to catch a glimpse of you at the Lotos as we pass through the city—as we hope to do within a fortnight Ⓐemendation if the madam improves.2explanatory note
W. A Andrews Esq | (Dialecter,) | Lotos Club | 2 Irving Place | New York. on flap: slc/mt postmarked: hartford ct. mar 28 6 pm Ⓐemendation
Andrews’s standard lecture was “Dialect Humor,” which included readings from Clemens’s work. He occasionally asked Clemens for assistance in preparing his material (see L5 , 208–9, 434–35).
Clemens anticipated passing through New York City on the way to Elmira. Both he and Andrews were members of the Lotos Club ( L5 , 291–92).
References
- Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt.
- 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 6: 1874–1875. Edited by Michael B. Frank and Harriet Elinor Smith. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 2002
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 5: 1872–1873. Edited by Lin Salamo and Harriet Elinor Smith. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1997
MS, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont (VtMiM).
L6 , 95–96.
purchased from William F. Kelleher in April 1944.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.