29 November 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card, in pencil: CLjC, UCCL 02466)
(SUPERSEDED)
Dear Dan—Please sell that confounded stock & send me the remains. I never did meddle with stocks without botching it.1explanatory note
This makes ten letters I have written you without getting an answer.2explanatory note You only write when you want me to run to your darned publisher, Dan.3explanatory note But never mind, that is human nature—nobody writes to anybody except to ask a favor—as I’m doing now.
The mining stock that Clemens first asked Wright to purchase for him in February 1876 (see 8 Feb 76click to open link, 7 Mar 76click to open link, and 26 Mar 76click to open link, all to Wright).
Including the present letter, only six letters to Wright survive from 1876. Clemens wrote the others on 5 Januaryclick to open link, 28 Januaryclick to open link, 8 Februaryclick to open link, 7 Marchclick to open link, and 26 Marchclick to open link. Wright answered at least the third and fourth of these (7 March 76 to Wright, n. 1; 26 Mar 76 to Wright, n. 1).
Elisha Bliss, publisher of Wright’s Big Bonanza (Wright 1876).
Berkove 1988, 9.
The MS was one of nine letters from Clemens to Wright which after Wright’s death “were left with his daughter, Mell Evans. She, in turn, passed them on to her daughter, Irma Evans Morris. Effie Mona Mack learned of them while doing research for Mark Twain in Nevada [Mack 1947], and purchased photographic negatives of them” (Berkove 1988, 4, 18 n. 1). Mrs. Morris bequeathed the letters to her three children. After Evans Morris’s death in 1990, the letters were sold, and most were purchased from Admirable Books in March 1993 by CLjC.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.