28 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: VtMiM, UCCL 01070)
Dialect is your forte, not logic, by my Ⓐemendation my boy. You get up a painstaking & excellent argument to show that if it weren’t for me, {& it’s mighty complimentary, I grant you,} you couldn’t follow your lucrative lecturing, but would have to retire er from the platform.; that you use my stuff with happy effect & that it proves a kind of inexhaustible bank account to you. And then upon from that able argument you draw the curious deduction that all this places me in your debt! My God, what a light the law has lost in you, my boy!1explanatory note
But chaff aside, old friend, I can’t do the thing you wish me to do. I am buried up to the eyes in work, & that work is standing still; for my wife is ill & has been for some little time; we have to deny ourselves & close the house against all visitors. I am just waiting & watching for a time when I may venture to remove my tribe to Elmira, N. Y., for the summer & get away from the cares & worries of housekeeping. When I do get to work again I shall know how to make the most of the minutes.
Hope to catch a glimpse of you at the Lotos as we pass through the city—as we hope to do within a fortnight Ⓐemendation if the madam improves.2explanatory note
W. A Andrews Esq | (Dialecter,) | Lotos Club | 2 Irving Place | New York. on flap: slc/mt postmarked: hartford ct. mar 28 6 pm Ⓐemendation
Andrews’s standard lecture was “Dialect Humor,” which included readings from Clemens’s work. He occasionally asked Clemens for assistance in preparing his material (see L5 , 208–9, 434–35).
Clemens anticipated passing through New York City on the way to Elmira. Both he and Andrews were members of the Lotos Club ( L5 , 291–92).
MS, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont (VtMiM).
L6 , 95–96.
purchased from William F. Kelleher in April 1944.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.