Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes ()

Source: Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass ([MH-H])

Cue: "Original M.S. of"

Source format: "MS, inscription"

Letter type: "inscription"

Notes:

Last modified: 1998-04-09T00:00:00

Revision History: HES 1998-04-09 was 1873.04.**

MTPDocEd
To Unidentified #1
7–30? April 1873 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 10821)

40 3 1

in pencil Object couldn’t been to convert, because already converted.

in ink The Bishop has said that the natives missionaries have done more harm than good, & that the natives would be have been far better off if they had never come gone there—which is to say that idolatry, & human sacrifices, and possible cannibalism, and wars, & famines, & the cruelties & barbarities practised upon the masses in former times by the chiefs, were far better than the education & civilization, & the peace & plenty & liberty & happiness conferred in later times upon these natives by the missionaries. In the face of

cross-written on the page 1explanatory note

Originalemendation MS. of
         first lecture.

Written, October, 1866.

San Francisco.

Yrs Truly
Sam . L. Clemens
                        Mark Twain.
Textual Commentary
7–30? April 1873 • To Unidentified #1Hartford, Conn.UCCL 10821
Source text(s):

MS, Houghton Library (Autograph file), Harvard University (MH-H).

Previous Publication:

L5 , 333–334.

Provenance:

bequeathed to MH-H in 1951 by engineer and bibliophile William B. Osgood Field (1870–1949).

Explanatory Notes
1 

Like the page enclosed with the previous letter, this one clearly belonged to an early draft of the Sandwich Islands lecture. It was written on what is almost certainly the same wove paper stock, albeit lacking the embossment (which appears only on pages torn from the top half of a full sheet). It too is in black ink (faded to brown) with two penciled revisions: the insertion of “0” in the page number “40” and the addition of one sentence at the top of the page. As in the previous case, the original sequence of pages to which this page belonged does not survive, but Clemens’s subject is clearly Bishop Staley’s habit of belittling the work of the American missionaries. The date of this letter has not been precisely determined. Nevertheless, because Clemens’s explanation here of the manuscript page was less complete than on 7 April, and because he wrote directly on the page instead of enclosing a covering note, it seems likely that it was at least the second time he had replied in this way to an autograph seeker, and that the letter was written sometime between 7 April and the end of the month.

Emendations and Textual Notes
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