10 September 1884 • Elmira, N.Y. (Hartford Courant, 16 July 1885, UCCL 12811)
Dear Mr. CodyⒶemendation—I have now seen your Wild West show two days in succession, &Ⓐemendation have enjoyed it thoroughly. It brought vividly back the breezy, wild life of the great plains & the Rocky Mountains & stirred me like a war song. Down to its smallest details the show is genuine—cowboys, vaqueros, Indians, stage-coach, costumes & all; it is wholly free from sham & insincerity, & the effects produced upon me by its spectacles were identical with those wrought upon me a long time ago by the same spectacles on the frontier. Your pony expressman was as tremendous an interest to me yesterday as he was twenty-three years ago when he used to come whizzing by from over the desert with his war news, & your bucking horses were even painfully real to me, as I rode one of those outrages once for nearly a quarter of a minute. It is often said on the other side of the water that none of the exhibitions which we send to England are purely & distinctively American. If you will take the Wild West show over there you can remove that reproach.
References
- 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
Hartford Courant, 16 July 1885, 2.