5 May 1868 • San Francisco, Calif. (Transcript: WU, UCCL 02731)
(SUPERSEDED)
TheⒶemendation Alta people, after some hesitation, have given me permission to use my printed letters, &Ⓐemendation have ceased to think of publishing them themselves in book form.Ⓐemendation I am steadily at work, &Ⓐemendation shallⒶemendation start eastⒶemendation with the completed manuscriptⒶemendation about the middle of June.Ⓐemendation1explanatory note
I lectured here on the tripⒶemendation the other night—Ⓐemendationover sixteen hundred dollarsⒶemendation in gold in the house—Ⓐemendationevery seat taken & paid for before night.
Clemens’s intention was probably to depart on the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s Golden City, scheduled for Saturday, 13 June. The company routinely dispatched its steamers for the Isthmus of Panama (and hence for New York) on the sixth, fourteenth, twenty-second, and thirtieth of each month, except when the date fell on a Sunday, which occasioned departure one day earlier or later (“Ocean Steamers,” San Francisco Alta California, 4 June 68, 4).
Transcript (handwritten, in ink) of the MS (now lost) made by Dana S. Ayer, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU). MTB (1:363) paraphrased and excerpted ‘I am . . . night.’ (215.7–216.2); MTL (1:152–53) published the entire letter. The MTB and MTL texts may derive independently from the MS through a common transcript, possibly the Ayer transcript itself, or another, now lost. Since none of the variants in MTB and MTL has been deemed superior to the readings in Ayer, however, Ayer is designated copy-text, and both MTL and MTB are treated as if they derive from it: all their variants are recorded, though none is adopted.
L2, 215–16; see Copy-text.
See Brownell Collectionclick to open link, pp. 509–11.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.