20 May 1867 • New York, N.Y. (MS: WU, UCCL 02779)
I have received your kind note, & would gladly accept your invitation but that I am find myself so pressed for time, now, that I dare not do it.1explanatory note My newspaper correspondence has fallen so behindhand in these last few weeks that if I lose a single day I shall not catch up before I leave. A magazine article or two, still unfinished, must be attended to.
I was to have lectured in Brooklyn again, & even hired the Academy of Music, but inexorable duty to my employers in San Francisco compelled me to give the lecture up.
I know Rondout pretty well, through my old shipmate, Kingman,2explanatory note & I assure th Ⓐemendationyou that I am sincerely sorry I cannot get up there this trip.
Henry W. Creal Esq | Sec’y Lincoln Literary Association | Rondout | N.Y. postmarked: new-york may 21 postage stamp removed docketed: “Mark Twain” | May 1867
“Creal” is Clemens’s misreading of Crane’s signature. Crane was a resident of Rondout (now Kingston), New York, and, according to Clemens’s envelope, secretary of the Lincoln Literary Association there. Crane later repeated his invitation, and Clemens eventually lectured in Rondout in 1868, 1870, and 1871 (Fatout, 136, 161).
Hector J. Kingman, late of Reese River, Nevada, was one of Clemens’s fellow passengers on the 1866–67 trip from San Francisco to New York. His connection with Rondout has not been further documented (“Eastward Bound,” San Francisco Alta California, 15 Dec 66, 1; SLC 1867).
MS, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU).
L2 , 47–48.
see Bassett Collection, p. 511.