28 December 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (TS: TxU-Hu, UCCL 01170)
dear redpath:
no, thanks’ my dislike of the platform has grown to such proportions that i believe i am at last one of those impossibilities which nasby denies the existence of ... A reformed lecturer1explanatory note. i am beyond the power of any of your seductions, my boy.
i am utterly surprised Ⓐemendation, to-day, to find that i can really write about as fast with this machine as i can with a pen, & make more mistakes, too Ⓐemendation.
yors ever, mark] Redpath’s stamped docket, in the right margin of Clemens’s letter, reads, “boston lyceum bureau. james redpath. dec 30 1874.” Possibly at a later date, Redpath mounted the letter on a separate sheet, on which he wrote the following note:
Mark Twain’s reply to an invitation of Jas Redpath to lecture once in New York after the conclusion of his Drama—the Gilded Age. The reply is ‘done’ by the “typewriting machine”—one of which he lately bought
The Gilded Age play completed its run at the Park Theatre in New York on 9 January 1875 (see 11 Jan 75 to Raymond, n. 1click to open link).
TS, made by Clemens, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin (TxU-Hu).
L6 , 333–334; Goodspeed’s Book Shop 1924, lot 248g, excerpt.