30 January 1884 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, in pencil: CSmH, UCCL 02901)
Only a line, to say how glad I am, for dear Molly’s sake—yes, & for yours; for you can’t be as indifferent to the thing as you seem. That’s all——I shall be cool & distant till you stop this dam nonsense of shirking Hartford every 3 months & then rushing home to apologize for it. Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian; for that is the very thing I often want to do toward friends of mine, but dasn’t, from principle. I have dramatized Tom Sawyer, & if you had come last night, you could have read it; for I finished it last night. The novel? Yes, it’s serious; the scene is laid in the Sandwich Islands 65 years ago; that is, the first part—second part is a number of years later. George W Cable has been sick in the house several daysⒶemendation, & is still confined to his bed, but is getting well fast.
Again congratulations to you both,
I believe John Hay wrote it, but I don’t know.
References
- Henry E. Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, Calif.
- 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 to Mrs. Fairbanks. Edited by Dixon Wecter. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library. 1949
MS, in pencil, CSmH.
MTMF, 256.