22 February 1883 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, in pencil: CU-MARK, UCCL 02350)
Your Dr. George is a fool; & your lecture would destroy you, & me too.
Try & guard yourself jealously against two things—lecturing & writing; for you cannot achieve even a respectable mediocrity in either.
You have lost me my day—& I could ill afford the waste. I have written you a dozen letters, & torn them up. Let this thing stop here; for if your time is not valuable, mine is; & I cannot waste it in combating your projects, which are always wild, & not worth combating. Submit no more projects to me, & no more MS. I have not an iota of faith in eaither. Depend upon your wife’s judgment—she has sense. You do not need to go elsewhere.
I do beg that you will sign the enclosed oath & abide by it—then we shall have peace. You are as good & kind as you can be, but you have no more this-worldly faculty than a babe.
Refer to Jennie’s baby-letter.
Keokuk, Feb. 1883.Ⓐemendation
I solemnly swear that during the remainder of the present year & all of the year 1884, I will make no proposition of any kind whatever a business nature or literary nature to my brother, in writing, by telegraph, or other vehicle; neither will I ask his advice concerning any business or literary project of mine; neither will I submit any piece of writing to him for judgment or criticism. Neither will I lecture.
2. Also, will I cease from the stupidity & foolishness of taking his “silence” for his “assent.” -(OVER) inserted on verso: —(for it always means dissent.)
3. I will remind myself of the details of this oath on at least once every week.
MS, in pencil, CU-MARK.
MicroML, reel 5.
see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open letter.