May 23 Tuesday – Judge Caleb F. Davis, President of Keokuk Savings Bank & Trust, wrote to Clemens:

I write to remind you of my request, and your promise to send me your photograph, and the published sketch you mentioned. … /

      Jo Patterson says, that when you first commenced to write and lecture, the greatest surprise of your immediate friends and relatives, was your familiar quotations from the Bible, as you were never known to read that book. Al Patterson says, if you do not write me something good, he will refer to you in his own sketch and tell how, when your family moved from the country, down in Missouri to Hannibal…they found you missing. Going back they found you in an old flour barrel asleep.

      Now save yourself from our friends and fill the sheet [enclosed]. As a general rule, literary fellows are impecunious, and you may not be an exception, therefore I enclose P.O. stamps for return favors. … /PS. Genl. Belknap, who is sitting by while I write, wants to know what became of your ‘patent Suspender,’ as he now has trouble in keeping up his pantaloons. / Keokuk, Iowa / May 23d 1882 [McDermott, “Mark Twain and the Bible” Papers on Language and Literature 4 (Spring 1968): 195-8]. Note: See Sam’s answer July 8, 1882.