Edson C. Chick was managing editor of the Aldine, a graphic arts and literary magazine published by James Sutton and Company, New York. Chick had solicited a picture of Clemens and an autobiographical sketch to accompany it for the April 1871 issue. Clemens sent a print of Mathew Brady’s July 1870 photograph, but not the sketch, by 23 February, when Chick wrote him, “I send you today copies of Mch ‘Aldine’. Having made the announcement of portrait we are anxious for copy. . . . Please let us know at once on what day we can depend on copy, or send copy itself” (CU-MARK). Clemens replied on 26 or 27 February with a telegram (now lost), evidently saying that he was then mailing the autobiography with a cover letter. The letter, which offered an additional sketch, survives only in the words quoted by Sutton, who replied for Chick on 2 March, accepting the first “charge of pepper” (the autobiography), but declining the offered sketch (CU-MARK). “An Autobiography,” with an engraving of the Brady photograph, appeared in the April Aldine (SLC 1871). Chick continued with the Aldine until it ceased publication in 1879, after which he worked for a time as a theatrical and art critic for Frank Leslie’s publications. He was later twice committed to asylums for the insane, first in New York, where he was discharged as “incurable but not dangerous,” and again in 1888 in Taunton, Massachusetts (“An Insane Journalist,” New York Times, 19 Apr 88, 1; Mott 1957, 410–12; 8 July 70 to OLC, n. 3click to open link; Chick to SLC, 27 Feb 71click to open link, CU-MARK; “The Aldine Dinner,” New York Tribune, 16 Mar 71, 5).