Mr. Clemens appoints twoⒶtextual note pupils and tries his scheme for Spontaneous OratoryⒶtextual note at the Dublin club houseⒶtextual note—Tells of his second lecture and the repetition of the Horace Greeley story—Tells the same thing later at Chickering Hall—The series of sevenⒶtextual note photographs of Mr. Clemens—Letter from his long-vanishedⒶtextual note sweetheart, Laura Wright—Reminiscences of her; of Youngblood, the pilot; and of Davis, the mate—Letter offering tour in vaudeville.
Around about here, in the New HampshireⒶtextual note woods and hills, are scattered a couple of dozen summer resorters, who own their houses and who come here every summer, some of themⒶtextual note from as far away as Chicago and St. Louis. They have a modest and pretty [begin page 200] club house for dances and other diversions, and two or three times a month they meet there and are entertained withⒶtextual note music, lectures, and so on, furnished by the home talent. The home talent consists of distinguished artists, college professors, historians, and so on—and I am a part of it myself. My turn having arrived now, I mean to exploit my system of “Spontaneous Oratory”Ⓐtextual note to-morrow afternoon, and see how it will go. Yesterday I appointed a couple of pupils—Messrs. Brush and SmithⒺexplanatory note—explainedⒶtextual note the game to them, and required them to be on hand to-morrow with three good anecdotes apiece. I shall ask the audience for a subject, and we three will debate it in accordance with the principles of my system. I believe the performance will be elevating and instructive. I know it will if my pupils bring good anecdotes, and if they shall always remember to introduce each anecdoteⒶtextual note with one and the same set formula monotonously—without changing a word. Ⓐtextual note I will furnish the formula; repetition of it will do the rest.Ⓐtextual note
For repetitionⒶtextual note is a mighty power in the domain of humor. If frequently used, nearly any precisely worded and unchanging formula Ⓐtextual note will eventuallyⒶtextual note compel laughter if it be gravely and earnestlyⒶtextual note repeated, at intervals, five or six times. I undertook to prove the truth of this, forty years ago, in San Francisco, on the occasion of my second attempt at lecturing. My first lecture had succeeded to my satisfaction. Then I prepared another one, but was afraid of it because the first fifteen minutes of it was not humorous. I felt the necessity of preceding it with something which would break up the house with a laugh and get me on pleasant and friendly terms with it at the start, instead of allowing it leisureⒶtextual note to congeal into a critical mood, since that could be disastrous. With this idea in mind, I prepared a scheme of so daring a nature that I wonder now that I ever had the courage to carry it through. San Francisco had been persecuted for five or six years with a silly and pointless and unkillableⒶtextual note anecdote which everybody had long ago grown weary of—weary unto death. It was as much as a man’s life was worth to tell that mouldyⒶtextual note anecdote to a citizen. I resolved to begin my lecture with it,Ⓐtextual note and keep on repeating it until the mere repetition should conquer the house and make it laugh. That anecdote is in one of my booksⒺexplanatory note.
There were fifteen hundred people present, and as I had been a reporter on one of the papersⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note for a good while I knew several hundred of them. They loved me, they couldn’t help it;Ⓐtextual note they admired me; and I knew it would grieve them, disappoint them, and make them sick at heart to hear me fetch out that odious anecdote with the air of a person who thought it new and good. I began with a description of my first day in the overland coach; then I said,
“At a little ’dobieⒶtextual note station out on the plains, next day, a man got in and after chatting along pleasantlyⒶtextual note for a while he said ‘I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it joltedⒶtextual note the buttons all off of Horace’s coat and finally shot his head [begin page 201] clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said he warn’tⒶtextual note in as much of a hurry as he was a while ago. But Hank Monk said “KeepⒶtextual note your seat, Horace, I’ll get you there on time!”Ⓐtextual note—and you bet he did, too, what was left of him!’ ”Ⓐtextual note
I told it in a level voice, in a colorless and monotonous way, without emphasizing any word in it, and succeeded in making it dreary and stupid to the limit. Then I paused and looked very much pleased with myself, and as if I expected a burst of laughter. Of course there was no laughter, nor anything resembling it. There was a dead silence. As far as the eye could reach that sea of faces was a sorrow to look upon; some bore an insulted look; some exhibited resentment, myⒶtextual note friends and acquaintances looked ashamed, and the house, as a body, looked as if it had taken an emetic.
I tried to look embarrassed, and did it very well. For a while I said nothing, but stood fumbling with my hands in a sort of mute appeal to the audience for compassion. Many did pity me—I could see it. But I could also see that the rest were thirsting for blood.Ⓐtextual note I presently began again, and stammered awkwardly along with some more details of the overland trip. Then I began to work up toward my anecdote again with the air of a person who thinks he did not tell it well the first time, and who feels that the house will like it the next time, if told with a better art. The house perceived that I was working up toward the anecdote again, and its indignation was very apparent. Then I said,
“Just after we left Julesburg, on the Platte, I was sitting with the driver and he said ‘IⒶtextual note can tell you a most laughable thing indeed if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it joltedⒶtextual note the buttons all off of Horace’s coat and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said he warn’tⒶtextual note in as much of a hurry as he was a while ago. But Hank Monk said “KeepⒶtextual note your seat, Horace, I’ll get you there on time!”Ⓐtextual note—and you bet he did, too, what was left of him!’ ”Ⓐtextual note
I stopped again, and looked gratified and expectant, but there wasn’t a sound. The house was as still as the tomb. I looked embarrassed again. I fumbled again. I tried to seem ready to cry, and once more, after a considerable silence, I took up the overland trip again, and once more I stumbled and hesitated along—thenⒶtextual note presently began again to work up toward the anecdote. The house exhibited distinct impatience, but I worked along up, trying all the while to look like a person who was sure that there was some mysterious reason why these people didn’t see how funny the anecdote was, and that they must see it if I could ever manage to tell it right, therefore I must make another effort. I said,
“A day or two after that we picked up a Denver man at the cross-roads and he chatted along very pleasantly for a while. Then he said ‘I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When [begin page 202] he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it joltedⒶtextual note the buttons all off of Horace’s coat and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said he warn’tⒶtextual note in as much of a hurry as he was a while ago. But Hank Monk said “KeepⒶtextual note your seat, Horace, I’ll get you there on time!”Ⓐtextual note—and you bet he did, too, what was left of him!’ ”Ⓐtextual note
All of a sudden the front ranks recognized the sell, and broke into a laugh. It spread back, and back, and back, to the furthest verge of the place; then swept forward again, and then back again, and at the end of a minute the laughter was as universal and as thunderously noisy as a tempest.
It was a heavenly sound to me, for I was nearly exhausted with weakness and apprehension, and wasⒶtextual note becoming almost convinced that I should have to stand there and keep on telling that anecdote all night, before I could make those people understand that I was workingⒶtextual note a delicate piece ofⒶtextual note satire. I am sure I should have stood my ground and gone on favoring them with that tale until I broke them down,Ⓐtextual note for I hadⒶtextual note the unconquerable conviction that the monotonous repetition of it would infallibly fetch them some time or other.
A good many years afterward there was to be an Authors’ Reading at Chickering Hall, in New York, and I thought I would try that anecdote again, and see if the repetition would be effective with an audience wholly unacquainted with it, and who would be obliged to find the fun solely in the repetition, if they found it at all, since there would be not a shred of anything in the tale itself that could stir anybody’s sense of humor but an idiot’s. I sat by James Russell LowellⒺexplanatory note on the platform, and he asked me what I was going to read. I said I was going to tell a brief and wholly pointless anecdote in a dreary and monotonous voice, and that therein would consist my whole performance. He said,
“That is a strange idea. What do you expect to accomplish by it?”
I said,
“Only a laugh. I want the audience to laugh.”
He said “Of course you do—that is your trade. They will require it of you. But do you think they are going to laugh at a silly and pointless anecdote drearily and monotonously told?”
“Yes,” I said, “they’ll laugh.”
Lowell said “I think you are dangerous company. I am going to move to the other end of this platform and get out of the way of the bricks.”
When my turn came I got up and exactly repeated—and most gravely and drearily—that San Francisco performance of so many years before. It was as deadly an ordeal as ever I have been through in the course of my checkered life. I never got a response of any kind until I had told that juicelessⒶtextual note anecdote in the same unvaryingⒶtextual note words five times Ⓐtextual note; [begin page 203] then the house saw the point and annihilated the heart-breaking silenceⒶtextual note with a most welcome crash. It revived me, and I needed it, for if I had had to tell it four more times I should have died—but I would have done it, if I had had to get somebody to hold me up. The house kept up that crash for a minute or two, and it was a soothing and blessedⒶtextual note thing to hear.
Mr. Lowell shook me cordially by the hand, and saidⒶtextual note,
“Mark, it was a triumph of art!Ⓐtextual note It was a triumph of grit, too. I would rather lead a forlorn hope and take my chances of a soldier’s bloody death than try to duplicate that performance.”
He said that during the first four repetitions, with that mute and solemn and wondering house before him, he thought he was going to perish with anxiety for me.Ⓐtextual note He said he had never been so sorry for a human being before, and that he was cold, all down his spine, until the fifth repetition broke up the house and brought the blessed relief.
The following post-card has been issued this morning to our summer resorters, and I think that if we fail in other ways, in our debate, the day will be saved anyhow by six or eight repetitions of that formula “How felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who—”
At the Club, on Saturday, September the 1stⒶtextual note, Mr. Mark Twain will reveal and explain the true secret of after-dinner speaking, and in a single lesson will teach novices, by a method of his own, how to speak successfully and acceptablyⒶtextual note upon any topic whatsoever, without embarrassment, without previous preparation, and even without knowledge of the subject.
After his explanation there will be a debate between himself and his pupils,Ⓐtextual note Messrs. George Brush and Joseph Smith, in illustration of his method.
The exhibition will begin at 4 p.m.
The pictures which Mr. Paine made on the portico here several weeks ago, have been developed, and are good. For the sake of the moral lesson which they teach, I wish to insert a set of them here for futureⒶtextual note generations to study, with the result, I hope, that they will reform, if they need it—and I expect they will. I am sending half a dozen of these sets to friendsⒺexplanatory note of mine who need reforming, and I have introduced the pictures to themⒶtextual note with this formula:
This series of photographs registers with scientific precision, stage by stage, the progress of a moral purpose through the mind of the human race’s Oldest Friend.
Shall I learn to be good? . . . . . . . . . . I will sit here and think it over. | Truly Yours | Mark Twain | Sept. ’06.
There do seem to be so many diffi . . . .
And yet if I should really try . . . . .
. . . . and just put my whole heart in it . . . . . . .
. . . . But then I couldn’t break the Sab . . . . .
. . . . and there’s so many other privileges, that . . . . perhaps . . . . .
Oh, never mind, I reckon I’m good enough just as I am.
At last we have heard again from my long-vanishedⒶtextual note little fourteen-year-old sweetheart of nearly fifty years ago. It had begun to look very much as if we had lost her again. She was drifting about among old friends in Missouri, and we couldn’t get upon her track. We supposed that she had returned to her home in California, where she teaches school, and we sent the check there. It traveled around during two months and finally found her, three or four days ago, in Columbia, Missouri. She has written a charming letterⒺexplanatory note, and it is full of character. Because of the character exhibited, I find in her, once moreⒶtextual note at sixty-three, the little girl of fourteen of so long ago.
When she went back up the river, on board the John J. Roe, in that ancient day which I have already spoken of in a previous chapter, the boat struck a snag in the night and was apparently bookedⒶtextual note to find the bottom of the Mississippi in a few minutes. She was rushed to the shore, and there was great excitement and much noise. Everybody was commanded to vacate the vesselⒶtextual note instantly. This was done,—at least for the moment no one seemed to be missing. Then Youngblood, one of the pilotsⒺexplanatory note, discovered that his little niece was not among the rescued. He and old Davis, the mate, rushed aboard the sinking boatⒶtextual note and hammered on Laura’s door, which they found locked, and shouted to her to come out—that there was not a moment to lose.
She replied quite calmly that there was something the matter with her hoop-skirt, and she couldn’t come yet. They said,
“Never mind the hoop-skirt. Come without it. There is no time to waste upon trifles.”Ⓐtextual note
But she answered, just as calmly, that she wasn’t going to come until the skirtⒶtextual note was repaired and she was in it. She kept her word, and came ashore, at her leisure, completely dressed.
I was thinking of this when I was reading her letter this morning, and the thought carried me so far back into the hoary past that for the moment I was living it over again, and was again a heedless and giddy lad, with all the vast intervening stretch of years abolished—and along with it my present condition, and my white head. And so, when I presently came upon the following passage in her letter it hit me with an astonishing surprise, and seemed to be referring to somebody else:Ⓐtextual note
But I must not weary you nor take up your valuable time with my chatter. I really forget that I am writing to one of the world’s most famous and sought-afterⒶtextual note men, which shows you that I am still roaming in the Forest of Arden.
And so I am a hero to Laura Wright!Ⓐtextual note It is wholly unthinkable. One can be a hero to other folk, and in a sort of vague way understand it, or at least believe it, but that a person can really be a hero to a near and familiar friend, is a thing which no hero has ever yet been able to realize, I am sure.
She has been visiting the Youngbloods. It revives in me some ancient and tragic memories. Youngblood was as fine a man as I have known. In that day he was young, and had a young wife and two small children—a most happy and contented family. He [begin page 212] was a good pilot, and he fully appreciated theⒶtextual note responsibilities of that great position. Once whenⒶtextual note a passenger boat upon which he was standing a pilot’s watch was burned on the Mississippi, he landed the boat and stood to his post at the wheel until everybody was ashore and the entire after part of the boat, including the after part of the pilot-house, was a mass of flame; then he climbed out over the breast-boardⒶtextual note and escaped with his life, though badly scorched and blistered by the fire. A year or two later, in New Orleans, he went out one night to do an errand for the family and was never heard of again. It was supposed that he was murdered, and that was doubtless the case, but the matter remains a mystery yet.
That old mate, Davis, was a very interesting man. He was past sixty, and his bushⒶtextual note of hair and whiskers would have been white if he had allowed them to have their own way, but he didn’t. He dyed them, and as he only dyed them four times a year heⒶtextual note was generally a curious spectacle. When the process was successful, his hair and whiskers were sometimes a bright and attractive green; at other times they were a deep and agreeableⒶtextual note purple; at still other times they would grow out and expose half an inch of white hair. Then the effect was striking, particularly as regards his whiskers, because in certain lights the belt of white hair next to his face would become nearly invisible; then his bushⒶtextual note of whiskers did not seem to be connected with his face at all, but quite separated from it and independent of it. Being a chief mate, he was a prodigious and competent swearer, a thing which the office requires.Ⓐtextual note But he had an auxiliary vocabulary which no other mate on the river possessed, and it made him able to persuade indolentⒶtextual note roustabouts more effectively than did the swearing of any other mate in the business,Ⓐtextual note because while it was not profane, it was of so mysterious and formidable and terrifying a nature that it sounded five or six times as profane as any language to be found on the fo’castle anywhere in the river service. Davis had no education beyond reading and something which so nearly resembled writing that it was reasonablyⒶtextual note well calculated to deceive. He read, and he read a great deal, and diligently, but his whole library consisted of a single book. It was Lyell’s “Geology,”Ⓐtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note and he had stuck to it until all its grim and ruggedⒶtextual note scientific terminology was familiar in his mouth, though he hadn’t the least idea of what the words meant, and didn’t care what they meant. All he wanted out ofⒶtextual note those great words was the energy they stirred up in his roustabouts.Ⓐtextual note In times of extreme emergencyⒶtextual note he would let flyⒶtextual note a volcanic irruptionⒶtextual note of the old regular orthodox profanity mixed up and seasoned all through with imposing geological terms, then formally chargeⒶtextual note his roustabouts with beingⒶtextual note OldⒶtextual note Silurian Invertebrates outⒶtextual note of the Incandescent Anisodactylous Post-Pliocene Period, and damn theⒶtextual note whole gangⒶtextual note in a body to perdition.Ⓐtextual note
People are always wounding my dignity. EveryⒶtextual note now and then some ignorant person afflicts me in that way. I was once a lecturer, but I have reformed long ago. I have discarded all such degradationsⒶtextual note and have tried to make the world understand that I am now a statelyⒶtextual note person who has retired from all small things and sits upon a summit apart—a great and shining literary light who deals substantially with nothing on a lower plane than the sun [begin page 213] and the constellations. And so when a letter such as came in this morning’s mail reaches me, it drags me down from my summit and humiliates me.
ReadⒶtextual note this irreverent letter and reflect uponⒶtextual note it. Think ofⒶtextual note a person proposing a tour in vaudeville to a man of my proportionsⒶtextual note! He wants to arrange a tour, he says, in which he could give me three consecutive weeks and one week of rest. He has no shame. He says he could give me as many weeks as I might desire, and that he would simply want a “sixteen to twenty minute monologue or lecture as you might choose to call it, and twice a day.”
WhyⒶtextual note doesn’t he propose a clog-danceⒶtextual note and doneⒶtextual note with it? HeⒶtextual note thinks I would enjoy such an engagement—thinks it will be a new field for me and show me a new set of faces; also he thinks the best part of the whole thing would be the “renumeration.” It is a good enough word, but it could not be more offensive to me if he had spelled it right. He thinks he can secure me a very “tidy sum”Ⓐtextual note per week.
But readⒶtextual note the letter.Ⓐtextual note I am wounded to the heart, and I cannot go on with it. If this man shall chance toⒶtextual note hear of our Spontaneous OratoryⒶtextual note experiment, he will probably affront me again.
The Boyle Agency
International
Vaudeville and Dramatic
31 west 31st street
New York August 24, 1906Ⓐtextual note
Samuel L. Clemmens, Esq., (Mark Twain)
21 Fifth Avenue, New York
My Dear Mr. Clemens:—
I should like to suggest to you a tour in vaudeville. I shall be able to arrange a tour in which we could give you say three consecutive weeks and one week of rest. I could give you as many weeks as you might desire beginning September 24 or the first week of October. I make this explanation, as I feared you could consider vaudeville too strenuous. We would simply want a sixteen to twenty minute monologue or lecture as you might choose to call it, and twice a day. Some of the weeks would include Sunday and some of them would mean only six days. I am very sure that you would enjoy such an engagement. It will be a new field for you, and would show you a new set of faces. The best part of the whole thing would be the renumeration. I am very sure that I can secure for you a very tidy sum per week. I name, of course, Hammerstein’s and the Percy G. Williams’ houses in this city and Brooklyn, and the highest class vaudeville houses in other cities East of Chicago. Kindly give this matter your earnest thought and let me know what you think you would like for this kind of an engagement per week.
Trusting that you are enjoying the best of health and that I may have a favorable reply from you, I am
Very truly yours,
B. Butler Boyle
Messrs. Brush and Smith] George de Forest Brush (1855–1941) was a painter associated with the American Renaissance movement of the turn of the century; Joseph Lindon Smith (1863–1950), likewise a painter, was an enthusiast of amateur theatricals. Both were residents of the artists’ colony of Dublin, New Hampshire (University Art Galleries 1985, 77–79, 115–16).
forty years ago, in San Francisco . . . That anecdote is in one of my books] A contemporary report of Clemens’s second San Francisco lecture, on 16 November 1866 at Platt’s Hall, said:
The lecturer commenced with a story he had heard about the Overland Mail service, and didn’t want to hear any more, for he had read it in the Tribune, in Bayard Taylor’s letter, in the letters of Ross Browne, and in the letters of every other person who had ever crossed the mountains and knew that there were such persons as Horace Greeley and Hank Monk. (“Amusements, Etc.,” San Francisco Alta California, 17 Nov 1866, 1)
Clemens used this anecdote in chapter 20 of Roughing It. For Horace Greeley, Hank Monk, and John Ross Browne, see RI 1993, 608–12, and L1, 370 n. 6.
I had been a reporter on one of the papers] The San Francisco Morning Call (see AD, 13 June 1906 and notes).
there was to be an Authors’ Reading at Chickering Hall . . . James Russell Lowell] Clemens resurrected this Monk-Greeley anecdote for the Chickering Hall reading of 28 November 1887. The speakers also included George Washington Cable and James Whitcomb Riley. The chairman was James Russell Lowell (1819–91), eminent man of letters and Harvard professor of modern languages and literature. He edited the Atlantic Monthly (1857–62) and the North American Review (1864–72), later serving as the American minister to Spain and ambassador to Great Britain (“Authors Have a Matinee,” New York Times, 29 Nov 1887, 5).
The pictures which Mr. Paine made . . . I am sending half a dozen of these sets to friends] Paine, who in his youth had been a professional photographer, took these photographs on the porch of Clemens’s summer rental (Upton House, Dublin, New Hampshire) on 25 June 1906, the day before Clemens departed for New York. After his return to Dublin he ordered and inscribed them as a series: “I like them ever so much. Mr. Paine made 7 negatives in the hope of getting one satisfactory one; & when the samples came back from the developer they were all good. It seemed to me that a progressive thought was traceable thru them, & after arranging the series in varying order several times I discovered what it was” (4 Sept 1906 to CC, CU-MARK). He sent out many sets of the pictures (certainly more than “half a dozen”) to friends and family that summer; in September he arranged for the pictures to be published in the Christmas number of Harper’s Weekly ( AutoMT1 , 542 n. 250.19–21; Lyon 1906, entries for 25 and 26 June; MTB, 3:1316; 27 Sept 1906 to Ashcroft, photocopy in CU-MARK; SLC 1906j).
my long-vanished little fourteen-year-old sweetheart . . . has written a charming letter] Laura Wright Dake’s letter of 27 August 1906 thanked Clemens effusively for the $1,000 check he had sent her (see AD, 30 July 1906):
Oh, how can I thank you! How can I, except to ask the Lord, every night as I commend myself to his care, to bless you and yours. You see, after having run the gauntlet of nearly every “ism” and speculative philosophy that has turned the modern mind towards Baal, I have gone back, baffled, to the simple faith—trusting it all to the Divine Intelligence and accepting what is sent, for weal or woe, without question. When, on a sudden impulse I wrote to you, hoping to reach Mr. Carnagie’s heart through yours, not knowing where I could find him, I sealed the letter with a fervent “As God wills it!” and lo! He has answered me.
I did not dream, my dear old friend, that you would respond personally, else I would not have presumed to ask such a thing. . . . However, it is not so much the generous response that enables me to carry into execution my heart’s desire (and that is more than mere words can tell you—) but it is the finding out that the adulation of a world has left unchanged the sweet nature of the friend of long ago. Few, oh so few come from this crucible untainted! (CU-MARK)
the John J. Roe . . . Youngblood, one of the pilots] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 30 July 1906.
Lyell’s “Geology,”] Charles Lyell’s three-volume Principles of Geology, first published in 1830–33 and revised frequently until the author’s death in 1875, established geology among the sciences and introduced its methods and vocabulary to a wide audience (Gribben 1980, 1:430).
Source documents.
Boyle to SLC Typed letter, B. Butler Boyle to SLC, 24 August 1906: ‘The Boyle . . . Butler Boyle’ (213.16–40).TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1200–1225, made from Hobby’s notes, the MS, and Boyle to SLC and revised; to 1211–17 are attached a set of photographic prints inscribed and numbered 1–7 in SLC’s hand.
TS1 carbon Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1200–25, revised.
Clemens revised TS1 ribbon. As with the previous dictation, his revisions were transferred to TS1 carbon by Lyon; he then made a further round of revisions to TS1 carbon, with an NAR installment in view. In the end the dictation was not used in NAR.
For the text of Clemens’s announcement of his exposition of after-dinner speaking (203.18–24), it is not known with certainty what document was provided to Hobby; our text follows TS1 as revised by Clemens. A one-page manuscript of the announcement, in Clemens’s hand, is preserved in the J. K. Lilly Collection at Indiana University, Bloomington (InU-Li).
The original letter from Laura M. Dake, quoted at 211.30–33, is extant; however, as regards this brief extract, it seems likely that Clemens read it aloud to Hobby, judging from the softening of Dake’s phrase ‘my magpie chatter’ to ‘my chatter’. Consequently, TS1 ribbon is the source text. The letter from B. Butler Boyle to Clemens, 24 August 1906, however, was clearly given to Hobby for copying, and the original typed letter is our source. From Boyle’s letter we have omitted a plethora of letterhead details (cable address, etc.).
In TS1 ribbon, the seven photographs forming “The Progress of a Moral Purpose” are pasted to pages 1211–17; in TS1 carbon, no photographs were pasted in, and pages 1212–17 were removed and a typed note added by Hobby to this effect.
Marginal Notes on TS1 carbon Concerning Publication in NAR