12 November 1883 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, typewritten, from dictation: ViU, UCCL 02855)
this is a postscript to my last letter, and its purpose is to make a confession. all of us were mightily pleased with those pastilles, and proportionably grateful to you for sending them, until we handed them around and tried to make a meal of them. susie and i held out longest; but at last she gave up, and said she believed they must have gotten spoiled by coming such a lo[n]g journey; but i said i didn’t believe they were of any account in the first place, and that those japanese merely ate them for style. when we had got thus far, it occurred to me to look in the dictionary; which i did; after that we exploited one of them on a shovel of howⒶemendation coals with vastly more satisfactory results. the whole thing sounds idiotic now, but it was a very serious matter while it lasted.
give the love of all the tribe to koto and to yourself.
letter docketed by House: Clemens S. L. | Nov. 12, 1883
References
- University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
- 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
- Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Previously Unpublished Letters. Prepared by Anh Quynh Bui, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Robert H. Hirst, Lin Salamo, and Harriet Elinor Smith. 8 vols. Berkeley: The Bancroft Library. 2001
MS, typewritten, from dictation, ViU.
MicroPUL, reel 2.