14 January 1873 • Hartford, Conn. (New York Tribune, “Lectures and
Letters—Extra Sheet,” after 15 Jan 73, UCCL 11835)
I am one who regards missionary work as slow &Ⓐemendation discouraging labor, & not immediately satisfactory in its results. But I am very far from considering such work either hopeless or useless. I believe that such seed, sown in savage ground, will produce wholesome fruit in the third generation, & certainly that result is worth striving for. But I do not think much can reasonably be expected of the first & second generations. It is against nature. It takes long & patient cultivation to turn the bitter almond into the peach. But we do not refrain from the effort on that account, for, after all, it pays.1explanatory note
Before sending the previous letter (delayed until 17 January) Clemens learned—probably from a 14 January advertisement—that his Sandwich Islands letters were to be reprinted the next day in the Tribune’s “Extra Sheet.” He evidently decided to take the opportunity to revise one of his remarks about missionaries in his first letter, printed on 6 January. He mailed this correction to Whitelaw Reid; the note that must have accompanied it does not survive. Reid responded on 15 January: “Your correction about the missionaries only arrived to day, unfortunately just 24 hours too late even for our extra sheet. But I will have the correction made tonight and a new plate cast for what we print hereafter” (Whitelaw Reid Papers, DLC; “We shall publish . . . ,” New York Tribune, 14 Jan 73, 4). The first issue of the “Extra” was printed from the same plates as the original 6 January printing, and the text was therefore identical. Later issues of the “Extra,” however, contained this additional paragraph (see Enclosure with 3 January 1873 to Whitelaw Reidclick to open link for the earlier version of the text: the addition was inserted after the paragraph “These people . . . pardonable way.”). This later issue (printed sometime after 15 January) is thus the source of the text that Clemens forwarded to Reid, presumably on 14 January.
“The Sandwich Islands,” New York Tribune, “Lectures and Letters—Extra Sheet,” undated, at least one issue printed after 15 Jan 73, 4. Copy-text is a microfilm edition of the newspaper in the Newspaper and Microcopy Division, University of California, Berkeley (CU-NEWS). The letter is a paragraph inserted in the issue or issues of the “Extra Sheet” printed after 15 January, of an article first printed in the daily Tribune on 6 January (SLC 1873).
L5 , 272–273.