15 August 1874 • Elmira, N.Y. ( MTL , 1:220–21, UCCL 01117)
I Ⓐemendation came away from Fredonia ashamed of myself;—almost too much humiliated to hold up my head & Ⓐemendation say good-bye. For I began to comprehend how much harm my conduct might do you socially in your village. I would have gone to that detestable oyster-brained bore & apologized for my inexcusable rudeness to him, but that I was satisfied he was of too small a calibre to know how to receive an apology with magnanimity.
Pamela appalled me by saying people had hinted that they wished to visit Livy when she came, but that she had given them no encouragement. I feared that those people would merely comprehend that their courtesies were not wanted, & yet not know exactly why they were not wanted.
I came away feeling that in return for your constant & tireless efforts to secure our bodily comfort & make our visit enjoyable, I had basely repaid you by making you sad & sore-hearted & leaving you so. And the natural result has fallen to me likewise—for a guilty conscience has harassed me ever since, & I have not had one short quarter of an hour of peace to this moment.
You spoke of Middletown. Why not go there & live? Mr. Crane says it is only about a hundred miles this side of New York on the Erie road. The fact that one or two of you might prefer to live somewhere else is not a valid objection—there are no 4 people who would all choose the same place—so it will be vain to wait for the day when your tastes shall be a unit. I seriously fear that our visit has damaged you in Fredonia, & so I wish you were out of it.
The baby is fat & strong, & Susie the same. Susie was charmed with the donkey & the doll.
P. S.—Dear Ma & Pamela Ⓐemendation—I am mainly grieved because I have been rude to a man who has been kind to you—& if you ever feel a desire to apologize to him for me, you may be sure that I will endorse the apology, no matter how strong it may be. I went to his bank to apologize to him, but my conviction was strong that he was not man enough to know how to take an apology & so I did not make it. Ⓐemendation 1explanatory note
The occasion of Clemens’s rudeness remains unidentified. The victim was either Heman D. M. Miner (1820–1902), the cashier of Miner’s Bank, founded in 1850 by his brother Hiram (d. 1872), or Spencer L. Bailey (b. 1839?), the cashier of the Union Bank Company (Douglas H. Shepard to Michael B. Frank, 3 Mar 1999, 10 May 2001, CU-MARK).
MTL , 1:220-21. The rationale for emendations to remove MTL styling is given in Description of Texts.
L6 , 207–208.