12 November 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 00532)
That was all right. I knew you’d print the dispatch—but next morning the little stranger’s health was so precarious that I thought I would try to stop the publication, merely on his mother’s account, for it Ⓐemendation he was taken away, all printed jokes about him would grate upon her feelings of course. But he seems to be doing pretty well, & so it was perfectly proper to print the message.1explanatory note
I wish I could be at the Press Club dinner tonightⒶemendation. I have sent the boys a dispatch.2explanatory note If I happen over to the telegraph office I will answer your letter by telegraph.
Love to you.
letter docketed: boston lyceum bureau. redpath & fall. nov 3 1870 3explanatory note and N. Y. | Buffalo | Mark Twain | Nov. 12 ’70
Apparently Clemens had telegraphed on 9 November, trying to forestall publication of his previous day’s telegram. Neither the 9 November telegram, nor Redpath’s reply, nor the further telegram Clemens promises in the next paragraph is known to survive.
The previous letter.
The bureau’s receipt stamp had not been properly set.
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H).
L4 , 235–236.
bequeathed to MH in 1918 by Evert J. Wendell.