5 December 1875 • (2nd of 2) • Hartford, Conn. (MS and MS facsimile: WU and Tollett and Harman, lot 156, UCCL 01286)
Why, you old thing, I haven’t ceased to love you.1explanatory note I always pray for you, too, when I get a chance. This is why you prosper. And besides, I’ve sent you my Sketches, today, with my name wrote in them2explanatory note——a thing which you’ve never done for me, in any of your bankruptⒶemendation last wills & testaments & things. There, now!
Rev. Wm. A. Seaver | (Free-Will BabtistⒶemendation) | & President Adriatic Ins. Co)Ⓐemendation 187 Broadway | New York. in upper left corner: Personal | rule in lower left corner: Down cellar. | flourish return address: if not delivered within 10 days, to be returned to postmarked: hartford conn. dec Ⓐemendation 7 11am
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):
Seaver’s postscript alluded to the breakfast Clemens had failed to attend (10 Nov 75 to Seaverclick to open letter). In his Harper’s Weekly “Personal” columns he mentioned Clemens four times in 1874 and not at all in 1875. In his Harper’s Bazar “Personal” columns he mentioned him four times in 1874 and seven times in 1875. He also wrote three items about Clemens in the “Editor’s Drawer” of Harper’s Monthly (for transcriptions of all the items see 1 May 74 to Seaverclick to open letter and Appendix Gclick to open letter).
The American Publishing Company mailed a cloth-bound copy of Sketches, New and Old to Seaver on 6 December (APC 1876).
MS, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU), is copy-text for the letter. MS facsimile, Tollett and Harman, lot 156, is copy-text for the envelope.
L6 , 598–99.