Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: CU-MARK ([CU-MARK])

Cue: "You were right when you wrote"

Source format: "Paraphrase"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: VF

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To Edward Hastings
17 February 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (Paraphrase: Edward Hastings to SLC, 25 April 1876,
CU-MARK, UCCL 12943)
the national home for disabled volunteer soldiers.
managers:
the president of the united states. the chief justice. the secretary of war.—ex officio.
major-general benjamin f. butler, president, lowell, mass.
officers of southern branch:
capt. p. t. woodfin, deputy governor and treasurer.
elizabeth city county, va., April 25 187 6
Mark Twain, Hartford. Conn
Sir,

The frank cordiality and sincerity of your letter to me, dated February 17, assures me that you will not deem me presumptuous in asking you to gratify the eager expectation of our men to read your new book “Tom Sawyer”. I can truly say that your books have not reposed on my ourⒶemendation shelves one hour since I received them, but are in constant use, knowing which will, I am sure, please you much. You were right when you wrote that no American author would say “no” to my requests on behalf of my Comrades, who will have a respectable, if not a large, collection of books very soon.1explanatory note Of Mr Clemens my comrades know very little, but with Mark Twain they have formed an acquaintance; and feel for him a regard at once familiar and respectful, and they would all be pleased to have the opportunity of showing it.

With unfeigned respect I subscribe myself

Your obedient servant
Edward Hastings
Librarian

Reading-room

4. p.m.

Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

Paraphrase, Edward Hastings to SLC, 25 April 1876, CU-MARK, UCLC 32332.

Provenance:

See Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.click to open link

Explanatory Notes
1 Clemens’s letter of 17 February is known to survive only as a brief paraphrase in this final request from Hastings. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was not published until December 1876, so Hastings presumably had been alerted to it by Howells’s early review in the Atlantic Monthly for May 1876, available by mid-April (Howells 1876b). “Answered,” Clemens wrote on Hastings’s envelope; his answer is also not known to survive.
Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ my our ● sic
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