27 June 1871 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: DLC, UCCL 00624)
Thank you for kind notice of lecture1explanatory note——would you mind saying that after writing & throwing aside two that & another new lectures, I have built a third, which latter seems really satisfactory to me, & is the only one I shall talk during the coming season. I call it: “Reminiscences of Some Pleasant Characters whom I have Met.” (If “whom” is bad grammar, please scratch it out.)
It covers my whole acquaintance—kings, humorists, lunatics, idiots & all.2explanatory note
Love to you.
“Mr. Mark Twain’s lecture next season will be ‘An Appeal in Behalf of Extending Suffrage to Boys.’ There has been so much loose writing about suffrage, and there are so many wild speeches made about it by the ladies (God bless ’em!), and such a general fuzzification and muzzification and deconcatenation of the whole matter, that it is quite time for a fresh departure” (“Personal,” New York Tribune, 16 June 71, 5).
“Mark Twain says that after writing his lecture on the rights of children, and still another one, he has thrown both aside and built a third, entitled, ‘Reminiscences of Some Pleasant Characters I Have Met.’ This, he says, covers his whole acquaintances—kings, humorists, lunatics, idiots, and all—and this alone he proposes to talk to his lyceum acquaintances next Winter” (“Personal,” New York Tribune, 29 June 71, 4).
MS, Whitelaw Reid Papers, Library of Congress (DLC).
L4 , 417–418.
The Whitelaw Reid Papers (part of the Papers of the Reid Family) were donated to DLC between 1953 and 1957 by Helen Rogers Reid (Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid).