18 April 1871 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00603)
Since Knox has printed a similar story (so (the same “situation” has been in print often—men have written it before Knox & I were born,)—let the Bull story alone until it appears in the book—or at least in the “specimen” chapters for canvassers. That is to say, Do not put it in the paper, at all. I cannot alter it—too much trouble.1explanatory note
Joe Goodman is up here at the farm with me—will come up every day for 2 months & write a novel.
He is going to read my MSS critically.2explanatory note
Livy just the same—no better, no worse.
P. S. No—I won’t print Jack & Moses. I may lecture next winter, & in that case shall want it.3explanatory note
Mind you, I do must not appear in the paper oftener than bi-monthly, in any case.
Replying to the previous letter, Orion (in a letter now lost) had warned Clemens of a resemblance between his Bemis buffalo story and a story by Thomas Knox, possibly in Overland through Asia (1870), published by the American Publishing Company. But nothing in that book is persuasively like Clemens’s story, and indeed, on 22 April, Bliss himself wrote Clemens “Your brother says he wrote you Knox had written up something similar to the Bull story—I never saw it & do not know anything about it. It Yours struck me as a good thing, every way” (CU-MARK, in RI 1993 , 850).
Goodman had arrived in Elmira on 24 March and stayed for several months. By 18 April he had almost certainly read much of what Clemens had written for his western book, either in the security copy for chapters 1–8 (which, except for the pony express anecdote mailed on 20 March, remained intact until 10 April) or in Clemens’s own manuscript from chapter 12 onward ( RI 1993 , 840–42).
Orion had evidently asked to print the “Jack & Moses” story (see the previous letter) in the American Publisher.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 378–379; MTMF , 153, brief excerpt; MTLP , 64–65.
see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.