12 January 1869 • El Paso, Ill. (MS: CSmH, UCCL 00229)
Enclosed are some Michigan notices. They ought to be printed, in order to keep up the excitement. The best one was written by a distinguished college professor. If you do print them, please save me 6 or 8 copies of each—& if you don’t, why, please preserve the originals for me. They came in the letter Mr. Fairbanks sent.1explanatory note Big house last night in Peoria—fine success, too.
Did you write to the girl for whose amusement the sun was created? Love to all.
Abel Fairbanks had forwarded a letter from John Morris enclosing three Michigan lecture reviews. Clemens received the letter on 11 January, in turn enclosed the reviews here, and probably sent Morris’s letter to Charles J. Langdon. None of the original clippings is known to survive, although two have been identified (see the next letter, and the clippings from the Charlotte Republican click to open link and the click to open linkLansing State Republican). The Cleveland Herald did not reprint any of the Michigan reviews, but on 18 January, as a “specimen” of the “universal praise” Mark Twain had received, it did reprint a review from the Indianapolis Journal of 5 January (“Lecture for the Benefit of the Orphans,” Cleveland Herald, 18 Jan 69, 1).
MS, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (CSmH, call no. HM 14238). There are separate commentaries for the enclosed clippings, from the Charlotte Republican click to open link and the click to open linkLansing State Republican), which do not survive with the letter.
L3 , 28; MTMF, 66.
see Huntington Library, pp. 582–83.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.