10 March 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: NN-B, UCCL 02543)
Have just sent out 160 MS pages of my book to be copied1explanatory note—shall have it back next Tuesday. Then I will ship it to Bliss & mark a chapter to be transferred to the Columns of the Publisher.2explanatory note
We must store all our furniture—that will be the best plan, for the reason that it will not be needed by us for at least 2 years—I mean to take my time in building a house & build it right , & —even if it does cost 25 per cent more.
So whenever the present house is sold we will box & ship the furniture to Bliss & let him rent a place & such as he describes, to store it in.3explanatory note I am very much obliged to him indeedⒶemendation. We won’t take less than $25,000 for the house, though, & so it may take us 6 months or a year to sell it (though we expect to sell it soon.)
Please sit down right away & torture your memory & write down in minute detail Ⓐemendationevery fact & exploit Ⓐemendationin the desperado Slade’s life that we heard on the Overland—& also describe his appearance & conversation as we saw him at Rocky Ridge station at breakfast. I want to make up a telling chapter from it for the book—& will put in it Ⓐemendationin the Publisher too, as soon as the agents begin to canvass.4explanatory note
Love to Mollie,
Clemens must have sent the entire 168 pages he had just promised (9 Mar 71 to OCclick to open letter), for the pages sent clearly included “The Old-Time Pony-Express of the Great Plains,” which at this time probably ended chapter 8 in the manuscript of Roughing It ( RI 1993 , 835, 838–40; 20 Mar 71 to Bliss and OCclick to open letter).
See 11 and 13 Mar 71 to OC, n. 1click to open letter. In September Clemens insured the furniture for $20,000 and shipped it to Hartford (27 Nov 71 to OLC, n. 1click to open letter).
Orion responded on 11 March, characterizing his extended, circumstantial account of the notorious Slade as “all I can remember—and more than I recollect distinctly or feel entirely certain of—trusting that it would be practically near enough correct” (CU-MARK, in RI 1993 , 778–81). Before 18 March Clemens used most of Orion’s information to complete chapter 10 of Roughing It ( RI 1993 , 835–36; 15 Sept 70 to the postmaster of Virginia City, nn. 2–4; 20 Mar 71 to Bliss and OCclick to open letter).
MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).
L4 , 348–349; Hill 44–45, brief excerpt; MTLP , 61 n. 1, brief excerpt.
It is not known when the MS became part of the Berg Collection, given by Dr. Albert A. Berg to NN in 1940 but continuously enlarged since then. A Brownell typescript is at WU (see Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance).