8 November 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (Boston Morning Journal, 9 Nov 70, UCCL 00528)
A son was born to me yesterday, &Ⓐemendation with the true family instinct he has gone to lecturing already. His subject is the same as Josh Billings’s—“Milk.”1explanatory note You are hereby constituted his agent, & instructed to make arrangements with Lyceums.2explanatory note
This popular lecture, sometimes called “Milk and Natral Histry,” was a rambling discourse in which Billings made only teasing reference to his nominal subject ( L3 , 397 n. 3; Kesterson, 109–12, 117–18).
The Boston Morning Journal published the telegram with the following preface:
The Ruling Passion Strong in—Birth. The Boston Lyceum Bureau has just received the following telegram, dated Buffalo, Nov. 8, from the famous humorist and lecturer, Mark Twain: (“Boston and Vicinity,” 9 Nov 70, 2)
For details of the telegram’s reprinting, see the textual commentary.
“Boston and Vicinity,” Boston Morning Journal, 9 Nov 70, 2. The printings noted below all evidently derive from the copy-text.
L4 , 227; “Local Intelligence,” Boston Evening Transcript, 9 Nov 20, 2; “Local Matters,” Boston Advertiser, 10 Nov 70, 1; “Personal,” Hartford Courant, 11 Nov 70, 2; “Personal,” New York World, 11 Nov 70, 5 (clipping in Olivia Clemens’s Commonplace Book, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley [CU-MARK]); “Brief Mention,” Hartford Times, 14 Nov 70, 1, in addition to the copy-text.