13 and 14 August 1864 • San Francisco, Calif. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00085)
I have managed to write another valuable letter to Ma, as follows:
“My Dear Mother—You have portrayed to me so often & so earnestly the benefit of taking frequent exercise, that I know it will please you to learn that I belong to the San F. Olympic Club, whose gymnasium is one of the largest & best appointed in the United States. I am glad, now, that you put me in the notion of it, Ma, because if you had not, I never would have thought of it myself. I think it nothing but right to give you the whole credit of it. It has been a great blessing to me. I feel like a new man. I sleep better, I have a healthier appetite, my intellect is clearer, & I have become so strong & hearty that I fully believe twenty years have been added to my life. I feel as if I ought to be very well satisfied with this result, when I reflect that I never was in that gymnasium but once in my life, & that was over three months ago.”
How’s that? I think I can see the old lady pluming herself as she reads the first page a Ⓐemendation aloud, & perhaps commenting to the auditory (they generally make my private letters pretty public at home,): “Thar, now, I always told Sam it would be so, & in those very wort wordsⒶemendation, I expect, but he was so headstrong he never would listen to me before; I guess he’s found out that I know some things worth knowing.” Oh, no—I guess she won’t snort, though, when she turns the page over, it ain’t likely.2explanatory note It takes me to make her life interesting to her. I wonder why she never inquired about the sequel to that mystery wherein the fellow was going to blow the young woman’s head off with a double-barreled shotgun Ⓐemendationthrough the back window?3explanatory note I guess she was ruther Ⓐemendationdown on that little novelette. She never encouraged me to go on with it.
I have got Dr Bellows stuck after my local items.4explanatory note He says he never fails to read them.—Ⓐemendationsaid he went into Ⓐemendation“convulsions of laughter” over the account of “What a Sky-Rocket Did.” He told me he would consider me a benefactor to him if I would publish a book. I itched to tell him an anecdote about that sky-rocket Ⓐemendationarticle, but I didn’t dare to. Somebody showed it to an old fellow down at San José, who is perfectly impervious to humor, just to see what he would say. He takes everything he finds in a newspaper in dead earnest. He read the article (it Ⓐemendationwas published day before yesterday—Friday, with oppressive solemnity until he came to where the neighbors were expecting the fellow that went up with the rocket, & moved their families out of his way, & then he slammed the paper on the floor & rose up & co angrily Ⓐemendationconfronted the man—& says he, : “W with Ⓐemendation bitter measureless scorn in his tones: “Was expect’n of him down! They druther he’d fall in the alley! Moved ther families out to give him a show! Now look-a-here, my friend, you may go on & believe that, if you think you can stand it, but you’ll excuse me. I just think it’s a God dam lie!”
I enclose the Hale & Norcross stock. It is all in your name, you see, so if I want to leave here at any time, there’ll be no bother about it. Put it in the safe, & if I get a chance to sell it well, endorse it & send it to me.5explanatory note
I wouldn’t Ⓐemendationhave had Ma & Pamela publish that letter of mine for a thousand dollars—but I shan’t say anything now to make them feel bad about it.6explanatory note
Clemens ended the first manuscript page of this letter with the words “with this result, when,” thereby allowing Orion and Mollie to experience the prank he was describing.
The Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows (1814–82) was the founder and president of the United States Sanitary Commission. From May to September 1864 he conducted a western fund-raising campaign for the commission while also filling the pulpit of San Francisco’s First Unitarian Church. As part of this campaign, he lectured in Nevada Territory in July, appearing in Virginia City (twice) and several other towns, but evidently not in Carson City, where Orion and Mollie were living (Virginia City Union: “Lectures!” 16 July 64, 2; “Dr. Bellows’ Lecture,” 21 July 64, 3; “Another Lecture from Dr. Bellows,” 23 July 64, 3). Clemens probably admired Bellows’s religious philosophy, which placed high value on humor, “the inner side of laughter,” asserting that it was indispensable to the health of “mind and heart” and that “the want of it is a calamity, and an injury to the sober and solid interests of society . . . to scholarship, economy, virtue, and reverence. . . . The intellect that plays a part of every day, works more powerfully and to better results, for the rest of the time; the heart that is gay for an hour, is more serious for the other hours of the day” (Bellows, 6–8). For details of Clemens’s friendship with Bellows, see CofC, 61–62, 66–68, 256–58.
The bid price for Hale and Norcross stock (see 26 May 64 to OCclick to open link, n. 4) had continued to plummet and currently was $300 per share (“San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board, August 13, 1864,” San Francisco Alta California, 14 Aug 64, 6). Clemens expressed his frustration with the unprofitability of this stock and with the company’s repeated assessments—$25, and occasionally $50, per share every two months—in the San Francisco Morning Call of 19 August:
The Hale & Norcross officers decide to sink a shaft. They levy forty thousand dollars. Next month they have a mighty good notion to go lower, and they levy a twenty thousand dollar assessment. Next month, the novelty of sinking the shaft has about worn off, and they think it would be nice to drift a while—twenty thousand dollars. The following month it occurs to them it would be so funny to pump a little—and they buy a forty thousand dollar pump. Thus it goes on for months and months, but the Hale & Norcross sends us no bullion, though most of the time there is an encouraging rumor afloat that they are “right in the casing!” (“What Goes with the Money?” ET&S2 , 455)
Despite his present claim to have transferred all of his Hale and Norcross holdings to Orion, Clemens still had two shares in his own name in May 1865 (see 11 Nov 64 to OCclick to open link, n. 5).
The allusion is probably to Clemens’s 17 May 1864 letterclick to open link to his mother and sister.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L1 , 307–309.
probably Moffett Collection; see p. 462.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.