3 December 1884 • en route from Albany, N.Y., to Ithaca, N.Y. (MS, in pencil: CU-MARK, UCCL 03044)
We arrived at Albany at noon, & a person in authority met us & said Gov. Cleveland had expressed a strong desire to have me call, & as he wanted to get acquainted with me. So as soon as we had fed ourselves we the gentleman with some other additional escort, took us in two barouches to the Capitol, & we had a quite jolly & pleasant brief chat with the President-elect. He remembered me easily, have seenⒶemendation me often in Buffalo, but I didn’t remember him., of course, & I didn’t say I did. He had to meet the electors at di a banquet in the evening, & expressed great regret that that must debar him from coming to the lecture; so I said if he would take my place on the platform I would run the banquet for him; but he said that that would be only a one-sided affair, because the lecture audience would be so disappointed. Then I sat down on four electrical bells at once (as the cats used to do at the farm,) & summoned four pages whom nobody had any used for.
We were all over the Capitol, which is a palace, & got acquainted with a lot of the State officers; then to the Senate chamber & saw the beginning of the solemn ceremony of the casting of the electoral vote of the State of New York for President of the U. S.
At night it was an enormous audience.
I met young Smith of Elmira & got all the news about the Arnots—very sad news it is.
Kiss me the “chirn” as Jean used to say. I love you, my darling.
Mrs. S. L. Clemens | Hartford | Conn return address: return to s. l. clemens, hartford, conn., if not delivered within 10 days. postmarked: alb & roch. ◊ p.o. dec 3 1884 and rec’d. hartford. conn. dec 3 1884 8pm
References
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- 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
- Wecter, Dixon. The Love Letters of Mark Twain. Edited by Dixon Wecter. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1949
- Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Manuscript Letters Now in the Mark Twain Papers. Prepared by Anh Quynh Bui, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Robert H. Hirst, Lin Salamo, and Harriet Elinor Smith. 11 vols. Berkeley: The Bancroft Library. 2001
MS, in pencil, CU-MARK.
LLMT, 221–22; MicroML, reel 5.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.