29? July 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (Boston Herald, 2 Aug 75, UCCL 11420)
Here you are again with your customary annual lecture temptations! Your offers have been prodigal before; but this time you surpass yourself when you say you will pay me whatever I ask. At first I thought I would take you up & Ⓐemendation go into the lecture field once more, charging you a million or perhaps two million dollars a week. But I consulted with friends of mine, & they said, with strong profanity, that it was too much. Now that comes from people trying to talk about a thing they do not know anything about. If these persons had ever gone lecturing a whole horrible winter, through mud & slush, they would have known that my terms were not only reasonable but almost divinely cheap. However, the violent remarks of these ignorant friends have decided my course; I will not lecture at all at any price. I will stay at home & sulk. But, joking aside, Redpath, I really cannot go upon the platform the coming season. All last winter I sat at home drunk with joy over every storm that howled along, because I knew that some dog of a lecturer was out in it. I am expecting to have just as good a time next winter, & do not think it is noble in you to want to deprive me of it.
The Boston Herald published this letter on Monday, 2 August (“Mark Twain Going to Stay at Home,” 4). Allowing a reasonable amount of time for it to reach Redpath and for him to give it to the newspaper, it is likely that Clemens wrote it no later than Thursday, 29 July.
“Mark Twain Going to Stay at Home,” Boston Herald, 2 Aug 75, 4. Copy-text is a microfilm edition of the newspaper in the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, Ill. (ICRL).
L6 , 520–521; “Mark Twain to Stay at Home,” Hartford Courant, 3 Aug 75, 2; “Mark Twain writes . . . ,” New York Evening Post, 3 Aug 75, 2; “Mark Twain to Stay at Home,” New York World, 6 Aug 75, 2.