Clemens’s inscription reads:

Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1825–1908) had been associate editor of the Cincinnati Commercial from 1859 until 1861, when he left the paper to become chief assistant to the librarian of Congress. He became librarian himself in 1864, holding the post until 1897, at which time he resumed, for the remainder of his life, the position of chief assistant. The informality of Clemens’s request, his first known letter to Spofford, suggests that the two men were already acquainted, probably since late 1867 and early 1868, when Clemens lived in Washington ( L2 , 108 –59, 170–202). Spofford evidently did not treat this letter as a copyright application: the records of the Copyright Office do not include a registration of the “Fortifications of Paris,” reproduced here (Lehr 1982).