7 September 1884 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS, in pencil: MH-H, UCCL 01434)
I am My whole interest, now, is centred in the task of hunting up, capturing, & sending to the penitentiary a drunken ruffian who has been a trouble to our neighboring farmers for a couple of years & who threat drew a revolver on Susie & Clara last Wednesday when they were down the road a piece & without a protector. So if you will write that speech, I shall hold myself infinitely obliged, seeing I couldn’t do it myself at this time to save my neck—couldn’t get my mind on it. But I know it is a shame to put it on you; & therefore, if you’d rather leave it for me to tackle when I get home & calm, a fortnight hence, I will then make it my first business.
Of course we couldn’t re-write that play—it wouldn’t pay at all to do that.
References
- Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass.
- 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
- MTHL. Mark Twain–Howells Letters. Edited by Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson, with the assistance of Frederick Anderson. 2 vols. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1960
MS, in pencil, MH-H.
MTHL, 2:504.
see Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.