24 December 1868 • Lansing, Mich. (MS: NPV, UCCL 00209)
No. 6.
I have nothing new to report concerning that matter, save that it moves along entirely to my satisfaction. I thank you ever so kindly for your letter—which I exhibited.1explanatory note I am not afraid of your betraying the secret.
I have nothing to write except to wish you all a merry Christmas & a happy new year. I have lectured in Newark, Rondout, Norwich, Scranton, Fort Plain, DetroitⒶemendation & Lansing, & am fairly under way, now. The above places are in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania & Michigan. I go into Ohio again, in a day or two, & shall spend New Year’s in Cleveland, it being very close to my other appointments. I shall be the guest of the “Herald” folks,2explanatory note of course. I hardly get time to turn around, much less write.
Give my love to all the family. I enclose some money—$20 for Ma, & $10 for the children, to buy holiday nonsense with, or to give to the missionaries, or to expend in any other specious speciesⒶemendation of dissipation that may engage their fancy.3explanatory note
I think you will like Norwich, New York, very much. If you will send Orion in the spring to rent a house (you only have to pay $150 to $200,) I will pay his way.4explanatory note Good-bye.
Presumably the same letter Clemens mentioned in his 19 and 20 December letter to Olivia.
Abel and Mary Mason Fairbanks.
Jane Clemens recorded the receipt of $20 from her son on 28 December as the sixth installment of that amount received from him that month, which explains Clemens’s own notation (“No. 6.”) at the top of his letter (29? Nov 68 to PAM, n. 4click to open link).
As he had earlier promised, Clemens here suggested one of the towns in western New York to which his mother and sister might want to move (10 Dec 68 to JLC and family, n. 3click to open link).
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L2 , 347–348; MTBus , 106–7, with omissions, and misdated 1869.
see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.