27 October 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01277)
Say, boss, do you want this to lighten up your old freight-◇train with?1explanatory note I supposeⒶemendation you won’t, but then it won’t take you long to say so. IⒶemendation do not enclose stamps for re-mailing because I have hardly enough to see me through the day, & neither is there a shinplaster in the house.
I shall run up to you very early in November—the md madam, too, if she is strong enough—& go with you to see some of the literary bi◇g guns about the copyright project.2explanatory note Shall want to abide with you 3 or 4 days.
Mrs. Clemens is dejected, despondent, discouraged. She gets up at 9, & by 11 is clear broken down & tired out. If this were May in place of October I would have her on board a Cunard steamer inside of 48 hours.
P. S. Mrs. Howells’◇s letter has just come & Mrs. Perkins & I have almost persuaded Mrs Clemens to go right off tomorrow to Cambridge & leave the children here. Mrs. Perkins says she will visit them every day & look after them. Mrs. C. has gone with Mrs. P. to luncheon, & I do hope they’ll come to the right decision in this matter—in which case I will tellegraphⒶemendation you.3explanatory note
Clemens enclosed the manuscript (now lost) for “A Literary Nightmare”—not, as previously thought, an unidentified “companion piece” (see MTHL , 1:108–9, and 4 Nov 75 to Howells, n. 7click to open link). Published in the Atlantic Monthly for February 1876, it professed to represent the debilitating effects of a contagious streetcar jingle eventually known by its chorus, “Punch, brothers, punch” (SLC 1876). In the April 1876 Scribner’s Monthly, Winkelried Wolfgang Brown alluded to Clemens’s article and explained that the jingle was composed by Isaac Bromley, of the New York Tribune, and Noah Brooks, of the Times. While riding on a streetcar in the Fourth Avenue line, they were struck by a notice that described a procedure adopted to prevent embezzling, whereby conductors were required to use a “bell punch” to audibly record each fare:
The conductor, when he receives a fare, will immediately punch in the presence of the passenger,
A blue trip slip for an 8 cent fare, A buff trip slip for a 6 cent fare, A pink trip slip for a 3 cent fare.introduced as a hymn in the editorial rooms of “The Tribune,” and Mr. =William C.] Wyckoff, the scientific editor, assisted by Mr. Moses P. Handy, then of “The Tribune” staff, now editor of “The Richmond Enquirer,” added to them the following chorus:
“Punch, boys, punch! punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passenjare. . . .”It was not intended to give the poem to the public; but one night it was taken down in shorthand from the lips of the choir, and the next day printed on an inside page of “The Tribune.”
Neither Elinor Howells’s letter nor a telegram from Clemens to Howells has been recovered, but the Clemenses did go to Cambridge, on 29 October. Lucy Perkins, the wife of Clemens’s lawyer, was a neighbor and close friend.
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).
L6 , 576–578; MTHL , 1:108–9.
see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.