Clemens wrote this note on a scrap of paper, the bottom third of a full sheet. Its approximate date is suggested by the third paragraph of the next letter. As that letter indicates, the present enclosure was probably a letter of introduction for Orion to either mail or deliver by hand.

The land was the large tract in undeveloped Tennessee that Clemens’s father had acquired in about 1830 and that his sons had been trying to dispose of profitably at least since the late 1850s. Clemens had renounced his interest in it in November 1869 ( L1 , 77, 326, 341, 343; L2 , 11 n. 1, 59 n. 5, 219; L3 , 270–72, 279–80, 386–87). The “Pittsburgh man” may have been the “Capt. White” whose proposals for a sale or trade Orion was still considering in June (PAM to OC and MEC, 14 June 70, and JLC to OC and MEC, 25 June 70, both in CU-MARK).

Despite the partly illegible postmark, this envelope almost certainly belongs to this letter. The Moffett family’s move to Fredonia (see the next letter) had caused Orion and Mollie Clemens to relocate from 1511 Pine Street, in St. Louis, where they had lived with the Moffetts for seven months. This new address was a boarding house belonging to Elizabeth M. Kennedy, a widow. By 28 June Orion and Mollie had moved again—to “comfortable quarters” at 1112 Locust Street, the home of a “Mrs. H.,” not otherwise identified (PAM to OC and MEC, 28 June 70, CU-MARK; L3 , 280 n. 2; Edwards 1870, 494, 966).