Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: The James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California. The collection of the Copley Library was sold in a series of auctions at Sotheby’s, New York, in 2010 and 2011 ([CLjC])

Cue: "Please sell that"

Source format: "MS, correspondence card, in pencil"

Letter type: "correspondence card"

Notes:

Last modified: 2001-03-22T00:00:00

Revision History: AB 2001-03-22 was IaWl2

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To William Wright (Dan De Quille)
29 November 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card, in pencil: CLjC, UCCL 02466)
Hartford, Nov. 29.

slcDear Dan—Please sell that confounded stock & send me the remains.1explanatory note I never did meddle with stocks without botching it.

This makes ten letters I have written you without getting an answer.2explanatory note You only write when you want me to run to your darned publisher, Dan.3explanatory note But never mind, that is human nature—nobody writes to anybody except to ask a favor—as I’m doing now.

Yrs Ever
Mark
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, correspondence card, in pencil, CLjC.

Previous Publication:

Berkove 1988, 9.

Provenance:

See the Morris Collection in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 The mining stock that Clemens asked Wright to purchase for him in his letters of February and March 1876 (see note 2).
2 

Including the present letter, only six letters to Wright are known to survive from 1876. Clemens wrote the others on 5 Januaryclick to open link, 28 Januaryclick to open link, 8 Februaryclick to open link, 7 Marchclick to open link, and 26 Marchclick to open link. Wright answered at least the third and fourth of these (7 March 1876 to Wright, n. 1; 26 Mar 1876 to Wright, n. 1).

3 

Elisha Bliss, publisher of Wright’s Big Bonanza (Wright 1876).

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