17 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NPV, UCCL 01530)
I suppose I am the worst correspondent in the whole wordld; & yet I grow worse & worse all the time. My conscience blisters me for not writing you, but it has ceased to abuse me for not writing other folks.
Life has come to be a very serious matter with me. I have a badgered, harassed feeling, a good part of my time. It comes mainly of business responsibilities & annoyances, & the persecutions of kindly letters from well-meaning strangers—to whom I must be rudely silent or else put in the biggest half of my time bothering over answers. There are other things, also, that help to consume my time & defeat my projects. Well, the consequence is, I cannot write a book at home. This cuts my income down. Therefore, I have about made up my mind to take my tribe & fly to some little corner of Europe & budge no more until I shall have completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs. We Please say nothing about this at present. We propose to sail the 10th April. I shall go to Fredonia to see you, but it will not be well for Livy to make that trip, I am afraid. However, we shall see. I will hope she can go.
Mr. Twichell has just come in, so I must go to him. We are all well, & send love to you all.
References
- Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
- 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
- Paine, Albert Bigelow, ed. Mark Twain’s Letters. Edited by Albert Bigelow Paine. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1917
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Papers, Special Collections, NPV.
MTL , 1:319–20.
See McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.