3 December 1876 • New York, N.Y. (MS, correspondence card, in pencil: CU-MARK, UCCL 01391)
slcLivy darling, I love you more than I can tell—on a card of this size, or any other.
Dined with those leddy-hets last night till 12, then went to bed. It was a 
delicious
dinner. I have but this moment got out of bed. Used no whisky or other liquor to sleep
on—was utterly tired out.1explanatory note
Osgood was in 2 hours ago. Am looking for Harte, now.2explanatory note
Mrs. T. B. Aldrich called—shall go presently & return it. With
vast love.
in ink: Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Hartford | Conn return address: st. james hotel. broadway and 26th street, new york. postmarked: new-york e dec 3 4 pm
Nothing is known of Clemens’s dinner with the unidentified “leddy-hets” (his daughter Clara’s pronunciation of “leatherheads”). He was on a two-night trip to New York, where he stayed at the St. James Hotel (“Arrivals at the Hotels,” New York Times, 3 Dec 1876, 2).
To confer about Ah Sin (see 20 Dec 1876 to Perkinsclick to open link).
The enclosed clipping is from the New York Times’s 3 December 1876 review of Forty Years’ Recollections of Life, Literature, and Public Affairs, a memoir by the Scottish poet and journalist Charles Mackay (1814–89) (“New Publications,” 10; Mackay 1877). The author of this advice was the English banker and poet Samuel Rogers (1763–1855). Clemens’s comment—“Coincidence”—indicates that it was his own strategy as well: see, for example, 19 Oct 1876 to Unidentifiedclick to open link.
MS, correspondence card, in pencil, CU-MARK, is Source text for the letter; the enclosed clipping is an excerpt cut from “New Publications,” New York Times, 3 December 1876, 10.
MicroML, reel 4.
See Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.