22 July 1876 • Elmira, N.Y. (New York Evening Post, 25 July 1876, UCCL 01350)
Now, when there is so much worrying &Ⓐemendation wailing & legislating about economy in postage, may I ask your attention to a conundrum touching that matter?2explanatory note If you write to a person in certain foreign countries, our government will forward your letter without requiring you to prepay the postage;3explanatory note but if you write to a person in your own or a neighboring state, you must not only prepay, but be sure you do not fall short a single penny; for if you do, the government will be afraid to risk collecting the penny at the other end, but will rush your letter to the Dead Letter Office (at an expense of about two cents), & then write you (at an expense of three cents) that you can have it by writing for it (pre-payment three cents) & enclosing three cents for its transmission. To illustrate our system: A fortnight ago a citizen of Hartford mailed a letter, directed to me at this place where I am summering, & inadvertently fell one cent short of full prepayment. The postoffice authorities held a council of war over it & then sent it to Washington in charge of an artillery regiment, at great cost to the nation. The Dead Letter Department worried over it several days & nights & then wrote me (at a cost of three cents) that I could have my letter for a three-cent stamp or its equivalent in coin. I, like an ass, sent for it, thinking it might contain a legacy, & yesterday it arrived here in a man-of-war, at vast expense to the government, & was brought to these premises by three companies of marines & a mortar battery, all of whom staid to supper. The letter had nothing in it but a doctor’s bill. On the same day I received a heavy letter from England with a one penny stamp on it & the words “Collect 18 pence.” It had been forwarded from Hartford without ever going to the Dead Letter Office.4explanatory note The conundrum I wish to ask is this: If a letter be under-prepaid, would it not be well to do it up in a rag & send it along, taking the risk of collecting the deficit at the other end, as used to be the custom before we learned so much?
However, the expense which I (& the government) incurred in the transmission of a doctor’s bill, which I did not want & do not value now that I have got it, was not the gravest feature of this unfortunate episode. The Postmaster-General was removed from the Cabinet for not collecting storage for the six days that my letter remained in the Dead Letter Office. It seems to me that this punishment was conspicuously disproportioned to the offence.5explanatory note
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was the paper’s co-owner and editor in chief. Bryant’s assistant editor at this time was his son-in-law, author Parke Godwin (1816–1904), who also had a financial interest in the paper and succeeded to the editorship upon Bryant’s death ( Evening Post 1925, 22, 24–25, 37; 31 July 1873 to Unidentified, L5 , 423 n. 3).
In June and July 1876 there were numerous articles in the press about “economy in postage,” detailing efforts to deal with the U. S. Post Office Department’s continuing deficits. Prominent was coverage of the post office appropriations bill passed on 5 July, after the House and Senate contended at length over various proposed cost-cutting measures, among them a nationwide reduction in service and in postmasters’ salaries, and a resolution that the post office department be made self-sustaining (New York Times, various articles, 9 June–22 July 1876, especially “Washington: Post-Office Bill Agreed to by Both Houses,” 6 July 1876, 1).
The doctor’s bill, if real, may have been from Cincinnatus A. Taft, and possibly forwarded by Charles E. Perkins. The following was the “letter from England,” containing an extraordinary request; it was mysteriously addressed to “Sir William” as well as to “S. L. Clemens” (CU-MARK):
Clemens had met the eccentric Cholmondeley in England in 1872 and visited him at Condover Hall in 1873 (see the link note following 4 Aug 1873 to Yates, L5 , 432–34). In a letter of 12 May 1876 Cholmondeley had first asked Clemens to bring “a collection of live North American birds” (CU-MARK). He mailed his present letter, with only a penny stamp, from Shrewsbury on 2 July. It reached New York on 16 July and went first to Hartford and then to Elmira. “Due .18” was rubber-stamped on the envelope. On the envelope Clemens wrote:
This contained a list of 205 species of American birds (from 4 to 10 of each species) for me to gather up & bring over to England with me! I returned the list, as it might be valuable.
The price to be paid for each bird was set opposite its name.
Marshall Jewell, of Hartford, the three-time governor of Connecticut and former minister to Russia, had resigned as postmaster general on 10 July 1876, after almost two years in office. Jewell’s reforms of uneconomical and fraudulent postal practices had created influential enemies who successfully pressed President Grant to request his resignation (28 Jan 1873 to the Public, L5 , 290 n. 2; 6 Sept 1874 to Fuller, L6 , 228–29 n. 1; “Washington,” New York Times, 12 July 1876, 1; Annual Cyclopaedia 1883, 457–58).
The Evening Post printed Clemens’s letter on 25 July, under this heading:
THE SECRET OUT!
Why Mr. Jewell was Dismissed from the Cabinet—Mark Twain Makes a Clean Breast of his own Connection with the Affair—A Good Starting-Point for a Course of Retrenchment and Economy—What it Cost to Send a Doctor’s Bill on a Grand Tour Under Military Escort—An Over True Tale with a Pointed Moral.
The paper added this note at the end of Clemens’s text:
[It was characteristic of Mr. Twain’s kind heart that he prepaid the postage on the foregoing letter to ourselves with stamps amounting to thirty-nine cents, when three cents would doubtless have answered every purpose. Having been indirectly instrumental in procuring the removal of one Postmaster-General, he was resolved that no act of his should result in another like injury to a public officer or to the country. It is to be regretted that sundry more frequent correspondents of ours are not equally considerate; aside from its political bearings, a little thoughtfulness on their part would often have a decided influence on the weight of the editorial purse.—Eds Evening Post.]
On 25 July, Montgomery Schuyler, of the New York World, sent Clemens a World galley proof reprinting his letter from the Evening Post (see 30 July 1876 to Schulyer for Clemens’s reply). On it he wrote (CU-MARK):
The World published its reprint on 26 July 1876 (5) as “Why Jewell Was Removed: Mark Twain on the Absurdities of Our Postal System.” The “puff” was Andrew Carpenter Wheeler’s 1874 review of Colonel Sellers in the World (see 30 July 1876 to Schuyler, n. 3).
“The Secret Out!,” New York Evening Post, 25 July 1876, 2.
“Why Jewell Was Removed,” New York World, 26 July 1876, 5; SLC 2014, 98–99.