Clemens had described the Reverend Thomas K. Beecher’s eccentric but humane plan for the new home of his Park Congregational Church, to which the Langdons belonged, in “A New Beecher Church” in the July 1871 American Publisher (SLC 1871). He had no doubt seen the picture of the “proposed pile” which Beecher sent to Olivia in December, through her brother, Charles Langdon. “It satisfies my eye—almost perfectly,” wrote Beecher, “& if we can ever get any figures from the Stone quarries, we shall be able to wade in intelligently” (Beecher to OLC, 6 Dec 71, CU-MARK). Horatio Nelson White of Syracuse provided architectural plans for the building, and in March the trustees of the church solicited construction bids. On 2 April the Elmira Advertiser reported, “The work of taking down the old Park Church and rebuilding the new one will be commenced in a few weeks” (“Sunday Meetings,” 4). The new church was completed in the fall of 1876 ( L4 , 411 n. 3, 440 n. 2; Cotton, 16; Elmira Advertiser: “Notice to Builders,” 27 Mar 72, 3; “City and Neighborhood,” 10 Jan 73, 4; Park Church , 8).

See 7 Mar 72 to Redpath and Fallclick to open link.

Clemens had already told Redpath in his 26 February telegram that his Boston trip was canceled. The Clemenses’ departure for Elmira—where Olivia could spend the final days of her pregnancy at her mother’s home (and, possibly, call on the services of Dr. Rachel Gleason)—would be delayed until mid-month. It would be a spring visit: they returned to Hartford in late May and in early July went to New Saybrook, Connecticut, for the rest of the summer.

Redpath’s note, written on the back of Clemens’s letter, referred to an enclosure, now lost. (Smith has not been identified.) Clemens probably sent a copy of “A New Beecher Church” (SLC 1871), which Redpath evidently considered reprinting in his next Lyceum Magazine (available by 5 June). The magazine had greatly expanded in the three years since its inception, and now contained a “Literary Department” devoted to original and reprinted articles about lecturers and lecturing. Clemens’s article was evidently a candidate for this department because it was a good advertisement for Beecher, who would join Redpath’s 1872–73 season roster for the first and only time, offering lectures entitled “Man Revealed by Music,” “The Negative Illusion,” “Property,” and an unnamed “spic-span new lecture” ( Lyceum 1872, 2; “Lectures,” Boston Globe, 6 June 72, 8; Eubank, 295–320). Although the magazine did not reprint anything by Clemens, he soon included “A New Beecher Church” in two collections of sketches published in May by Routledge and Sons, A Curious Dream and Mark Twain’s Sketches (see 31 Mar 72 to Osgood, n. 4click to open link).