8 January 1870 • (2nd of 2) • Troy, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00404)
Sweetheart, this is the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, which was fought & bloodily won by Gen. Jackson, at a time when England & America were at peace.1explanatory note
It is also the anniversary of other events, but I do not know what they were, now.
I have been reading some new arguments to prove that the world is very old, & that the six days of creation were six immensely long periods. For instance, according to Genesis, the stars were made when the world was, yet this writer mentions the significant fact that there are stars within reach of our telescopes whose light requires 50,000 years to traverse the wastes of space & come to our earth.2explanatory note And so, if we made a tour through space ourselves, might we not, in some remote era of the future, meet & shake han greet the lag first lagging rays of Ⓐemendation stars that started on their weary visit to us a million years ago?—rays that are outcast & homeless, now, their parent stars crumbled to nothingness & swept from the firmament five hundred thousand years after these journeying rays departed—stars whose peoples lived their little lives, & laughed & wept, hoped & feared, sinned & perished, bewildering ages since these vagrant twinklings went wandering through the solemn solitudes of space?
How insignificant we are, with our pigmy little world!—an atom glinting with uncounted myriads of other atom worlds in a broad shaft of light streaming from God’s countenance—& yet prating complacently about of our speck as the Great World, & regarding the other specks as pretty trifles made to steer our schooners by & inspire the reveries of “puppy” lovers. Did Christ live 33 years in each of the millions & millions of worlds that hold their majestic courses above our heads? Ou Or Ⓐemendation was our small glov globe Ⓐemendation the favored one of all? Does one apple in a vast orchard think as much of itself as we do?—or one leaf in the forest,—or one grain of sand upon the sea shore? Do the pismires argue upon vexed questions of theology Ⓐemendation pismire theology,—& do they climb a molehill & look abroad over the grand universe of an acre of ground & say “Great is God, who created all things for Us?”3explanatory note
I do not see how astronomers can help feeling Ⓐemendation exquisitely insignificant, for every new page of the Book of the Heavens they open reveals to them more & more that the world we are so proud of is to the universe of careering globes is as is one mosquito to the winged & hoofed flocks & hea herds Ⓐemendation that darken the air & populate the plains & forests of all the earth. Verily, What is Man, that he should be considered of God? If you killed the mosquito, would it be missed? Verily, What is m Man, that he should be considered of God?4explanatory note
One of these astronomers has been taking photographs of tongues of flame 17,000 miles high that shot shoot Ⓐemendation aloft from the surface of the sun, & waver Ⓐemendation, & sink, & rise again—all in two or three minutes,—& sometimes in one minute swinging a banner of flame from left to right a distance of 5,000 miles—an inconceivable velocity! Think of the hurricanes that sweep the sun, to do such miracles as this! And other tongues of flame stream upward, arch & bend & hang down again, forming a crimson arch 28,000 Ⓐemendation miles in height, through which our poor globe might be bowled as one bowls an apple Ⓐemendation a football between a boy’s legs.5explanatory note
But I must stop. I have concluded to stay here to-day & tomorrow, as this hotel suits me first-rate. I had the sagacity to enter my nom de plume on the register, & so they have made me very comfortable. (For I find that the landlord6explanatory note is a frantic admirer of mine.) He is a good fellow, too (naturally.)
Go to bed, sweetheart. Go to bed, & sleep peacefully, & awake refreshed & happy, my darling.
Add to list of after-cards for San Francisco:
Mr. & Mrs. Dr. Bruner.
Mrs. Joseph Woodworth, care of Dr. Bruner.7explanatory note
Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | N. Y. return address: troy house troy, n. y. chas. h. jones. proprietor. postmarked: troy n. y. jan 10 Ⓐemendation docketed by OLL: 8explanatory note 170th
Fought on this date in 1815, the Battle of New Orleans came two weeks after the treaty ending the War of 1812 was signed, but five weeks before its ratification on 17 February. American troops under Andrew Jackson decisively defeated an invading British force. Clemens also mentioned the anniversary in an 1868 letter to Emeline Beach ( L2 , 147).
Clemens was reading “The Early History of Man” in the Eclectic Magazine for January 1870 (n.s., 11:1–16, reprinting the North British Review, n.s., 11 [July 69]: 516–49; cited in Cummings, 11). The anonymous writer rejected the “popular chronology” that put the earth’s age at less than 20,000 years:
It is familiar that the defenders of this chronology—which is as purely a human invention as is the bicycle velocipede—have been obliged to stretch the days of creation, as given in Genesis, into periods of time of indefinite duration—millions of years, if necessary. . . . Our next remark is that astronomy sets the existence of the world more than 20,000 years ago beyond doubt, by showing that there are stars now visible to us whose light takes at least 50,000 years to cross the space that separates us from them. (6–7)
That Clemens read the Eclectic was first deduced from his use of pages torn from a copy of it ( L3 , 394 n. 3, 400 n. 1 top).
Revelation 4:11: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”
Psalms 8:4: “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
Clemens’s source here was “Solar Wonders,” also in the January 1870 Eclectic Magazine (n.s., 11:112–14, reprinting the London Spectator 42 [13 Nov 69]: 1328–29; cited in Cummings, 12). Its unidentified author reported:
We have before us as we write a series of colored prominence-pictures taken by Dr. [Johann Karl Friedrich] Zöllner, the eminent photometrician. It is impossible to contemplate these strange figures without a sense of the magnificence of the problem which the sun presents to astronomers. . . . First, there is a vast flame, some 18,000 miles high, bowed towards the right, as though some fierce wind were blowing upon it. It extends in this direction some four or five thousand miles. The next picture represents the same object ten minutes later. The figure of the prominence has wholly changed. It is now a globe-shaped mass, standing on a narrow stalk of light above a row of flame-hillocks. It is bowed towards the left, so that in those short minutes the whole mass of the flame has swept thousands of miles away from its former position. Only two minutes later, and again a complete change of appearance. The stalk and the flame-hillocks have vanished, and the globe-shaped mass has become elongated. Three minutes later, the shape of the prominence has altered so completely that one can hardly recognize it for the same. The stalk is again visible, but the upper mass is bowed down on the right so that the whole figure resembles a gigantic A, without the cross-bar, and with the downstroke abnormally thick. This great A is some twenty thousand miles in height, and the whole mass of our earth might be bowled between its legs without touching them! (112–13)
See the return address.
Clemens had known physician William H. Bruner and his wife, the former Jane Woodworth, since the mid-1860s. The Bruners had a son and two daughters before they divorced in 1874. After the divorce, Jane Bruner contributed to newspapers and wrote a novel, Free Prisoners: A Story of California Life (1877), and a play, A Mad World, which had a brief run in San Francisco and which, in 1882, Clemens tried to help her have produced in the East. Mrs. Joseph Woodworth was either her sister-in-law or, more likely, her mother. Clemens probably knew Joseph Woodworth, a San Francisco dealer in mining stock from 1863 to 1866. He lived in San Francisco only sporadically between 1867 and 1871, but city directories list him at the same address with Bruner in 1864 and again in 1871, so Mrs. Woodworth may have been there when Clemens wrote this letter (Jane W. Bruner to SLC, 29 Mar 82 and 7 Apr 82, CU-MARK; Langley: 1863, 82, 380, 405; 1864, 86, 419; 1865, 98, 464; 1871, 127, 685).
Clemens’s next letter to Olivia (docket number 171), presumably written from Troy on 9 January, is missing ( L3 , 479).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 11–14; LLMT , 132–34, with omission; Chester L. Davis 1981, 1–2, with omission.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.