Henry George (1839–97)—later renowned for his writings on political economy—was at this time the editor of the Oakland (Calif.) Transcript. A native of Philadelphia, he had migrated to California in 1858, where, after his marriage in 1861, he experienced years of poverty while supporting his family as a typesetter, mining speculator, door-to-door salesman, and newspaper contributor before serving as managing editor of the San Francisco Times and then of the San Francisco Chronicle in 1867–68. He edited the Transcript for only a few months, from September 1869 to February 1870, and then became managing editor of the Sacramento Reporter. George and Clemens might have met in San Francisco in the spring of 1865, when both men were contributors to the Californian, or in Sacramento the following year. According to George’s son, while his father was a struggling printer in the state capital and “ready to turn his hand to whatever would bring him a living. ... a young newspaper man named Samuel L. Clemens, who, under the nom de plume of ‘Mark Twain,’ had won a reputation on the Coast as a humourist of a dry and original quality, came to Sacramento to lecture. Another newspaper man, Denis E. McCarthy, acting as manager, hired Henry George to take tickets at the door” (Henry George, Jr., 138). Although George’s son assigned the occasion to 1862, it in fact must have been Clemens’s lecture of 11 October 1866, at which time, as in 1862, George was a Sacramento printer (Henry George, Jr., 175–76, 197, 208, 211; Henry George; Barker, 58–63, 67, 72, 74–76, 91, 101, 105, 110, 113, 124, 131, 138, 144; L1 , 362).

George H. Selkirk, one of Clemens’s partners, was business manager of the Buffalo Express and president of the Express Printing Company. He had been a lieutenant colonel in the Forty-ninth New York Infantry during the Civil War. The dating of Clemens’s directive to him remains uncertain. The postmarks on the envelope of Henry George’s letter indicate that it left Oakland on 8 November and arrived in Buffalo ten days later. After delivery to the Express office, it was forwarded to Elmira and may have arrived at the Langdon home as early as 19 November. If Olivia immediately enclosed it in a letter addressed to Boston, Clemens could have received it there and responded as early as 20 November. If instead she forwarded it to his next known lecture stop, he would not have received it until 23 November, in Hartford. And if it was among the November letters from her that were delayed in reaching him, he might not have received it until the twenty-eighth of the month. The weekly edition of the Express, which Clemens here authorizes for Henry George, issued on Thursdays and presumably included Clemens’s “matter” from the daily paper. Between 1 November 1869 and 21 January 1870, the period of his lecture tour, his contributions to the daily Express consisted of “Around the World” letters 3–6 as well as: “A Good Letter,” two “Browsing Around” letters, “Ye Cuban Patriot,” “An Awful—Terrible Medieval Romance,” and “A Ghost Story” (SLC 1869 [MT00847], 1869 [MT00849], 1869 [MT00851], 1869 [MT00852], 1869 [MT00856], 1869 [MT00857], 1869 [MT00858], 1870 [MT00869], 1870 [MT00871], 1870 [MT00875]; Berry; “Twain Success Puzzle to His Old Office Boy,” Buffalo Courier-Express, 24 Feb 1929, sec. S, 8; Frank H. Severance, 334; Heitman, 2:145; Rowell, 66; 25 Nov 69click to open letter and 28 Nov 69, both to OLLclick to open letter).