14 September 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01261)
I question if I can write this note intelligibly, for Susie is in the study with me & requires pretty constant attention.
I did think of writing upon copyrightⒶemendation (without signature), but concluded that the most effectual method of carrying out my views will be to get all authors signatures to my petition & then go to Washington & besiege Congress myself., (s appearing simply as agent for bigger men.) This is of course the best way—& to make it effectual, no literature must let the cat out of the bag beforehandⒶemendation .
I As to other articles, I can venture to promise that during the year I will write “some articles” not specifying when or the number or subject of them. IⒶemendation had better not try to be more definite.
Have told Bliss to send my volume of Sketches to you before any one else (it is in press now). I think it is an exceedingly handsome book. I destroyed a mass of Sketches, & now heartily wish I had destroyed some more of them—but it is too late to grieve now.2explanatory note
I wish you & Mrs Howells were here. It is exceedingly pleasant weather. Mrs Clemens & I join in love to you both.
Susie’s patience is exhausted!
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK). It is torn on the right side; editorial interpolations supply the conjectured missing words:
Between 17 July and 25 September 1875, the New York Tribune printed twelve letters to the editor about copyright by the English novelist and dramatist Charles Reade (1814–84), which appeared simultaneously in London as thirteen letters to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette (Reade 1875b–m). The tenth Tribune letter appeared on 11 September. Previously the newspaper had published a letter on copyright by Reade that was not part of the Pall Mall Gazette series (Reade 1875 [bib00025]).
The first one hundred copies of Sketches, New and Old arrived from the bindery on 25 September. Clemens “destroyed” a number of sketches only in the sense that his book ultimately excluded eighteen of the eighty-one he had originally listed in his “index” ( ET&S1 , 623, 633; 12 Feb 75 to Osgood, n. 5click to open letter).
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).
L6 , 534–35; MTHL , 1:98–99.
see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.