1 November 1866 • Virginia City, Nev. (Transcript: CU-MARK, UCCL 00108)
california state telegraph company Ⓐemendation
to A Curry, J. Neely Johnson Ⓐemendation
R M Howland & others
Been on sick list off now—I accept for Saturday with many thanks—will be there tomorrow1explanatory note
17 Pd. 85 J
Clemens was responding to the following letter:
Mark Twain, Esq.: Dear Sir—The undersigned, Citizens of Carson City, respectfully invite you to favor them with a repetition of the Address or Lecture which you have so acceptably presented to the People of San Francisco and other places, on the subject of the Sandwich Islands, and its People, or any other man, at such time as may comport with your other engagements in this respect. An early reply to this invitation will the more satisfactorily enable us to make such announcement of the fact of your acceptance (if agreeable to you) as will secure the attendance on such an occasion, of the people of Carson City, who remember you in times gone by as one of its citizens, and who have none other than the most kindly remembrances of you. (Carson City Daily Appeal, 31 Oct 66, 3, clipping in Scrap-book 1:71, CU-MARK)
More than one hundred individuals signed this invitation, including Curry, Johnson, Howland, and, at the head of the list, the addressees of the next letter.
Wecter was a meticulous and accurate transcriber. His typescript reflects the style of known telegraph forms in matters like spacing, alignment, typography, and the record of the telegram’s word count. Text presumed to have been printed on the original telegram blank appears in small capitals, and dotted underscores have been supplied below the portions of the dateline and address line that would normally have been written in blanks provided for them. The emendations report these typographic refinements on Wecter’s typescript. A border has also been added to distinguish this text as a telegram, on the model of Clemens’s telegrams of 15click to open link and 21 June 58 to William A. Moffettclick to open link (pp. 80 and 85).
Transcript, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). The transcript is a TS prepared by Dixon Wecter from the original telegram blank, which was presumably filled out in the hand of a telegraph operator and received by Curry and the others.
L1 , 363.
In September 1948 Mrs. Charles Gunn and Louise Howland, daughters of Robert M. Howland, loaned the original of this document and nine MS Clemens letters to Dixon Wecter, then editor of the Mark Twain Papers, to enable him to transcribe them. Sometime after Wecter returned the letters, the original of this telegram was lost.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.