8 January 1872 • Salem, Ohio (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00711)
Livy darling, I got your dispatch announcing safe arrival of all the checks.2explanatory note
Well, slowly this lecturing penance drags toward the end. Heaven knows I shall be glad when I get far away from these country communities of wooden-heads. Whenever I want to go w away from New England again, lecturing, please show these letters to me & bring me to my senses. How I do chafe & sweat when I count up the Dutch audiences I have yet to play the fool before.
I want to see you—writing is no good. Speed the day! I love you, darling.
Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor. Forest & Hawthorne sts | Hartford | Conn. postmarked: salem o. jan 9
The Salem Republican judged that Clemens’s 8 January lecture “as a whole” did not meet expectations. It praised “some passages of fine description and word painting,” but complained that “no one could tell when he told the truth or when he was indulging in fiction, and when he was half through, his hearers had lost confidence in his sayings, and did not expect to be told anything on which they could rely” (10 Jan 72, transcript in CU-MARK courtesy of William Baker).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 14; LLMT , 362, brief paraphrase.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.