January 21 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Chatto & Windus, his English publishers, with corrections for Punch Brothers, Punch! And Other Sketches; that the article would be in the March issue of Atlantic, released Feb. 15 [MTLE 3: 4].
Sam also wrote Moncure Conway about the several articles he’d instructed Atlantic to send to Chatto for publication in England. He informed Conway that he was writing to Routledge & Sons giving Conway the “sole power over there to make book contracts” [MTLE 3: 5]. Note: Sam was lining up his ducks before leaving for Europe.
John Wentworth Sanborn (1848-1922), Methodist Episcopal minister, Indian culture expert, wrote from Gowanda, NY.
Mark Twain, / Dear Sir;
I got hold of a Circular which advertised your Scrap Book, and by it I was enveigled into sending for one; It arrived today. I’ve used it. I am a plain minister of the gospel, and I wish to say, I never swore any more in my life than I have today. I am as fond of fun as you are, but when it comes to be so serious a matter—this Scrap Book affair—I must pause. Certainly your Scrap Book with nothing but gummed lines is a very funny book—probably the funniest book you ever made, but, my dear Twain, why didn’t you tell folks not to moisten your gummed lines with their fingers. I got stuck to those gummed lines.—I cant help emphasizing gummed—I have about three hundred sympathizing parishioners, counting men, women and babies, and they’ve all been in—every one of them, with lots of their neighbors, to get me away from your awful Scrap Book; but I am stuck fast. For fruitlessly endeavoring to get loose from your gummed lines.
Already your Scrap Book is advertised all over this town and my greatest fear is that somebody else will get fast!
Why did n’t you tell people how to handle the dangerous thing? I’ve an engagement to lecture to-morrow night, and, unless I break loose, I shall have to carry this product of your wicked brain to the very platform. If I must, I must, but be assured I shall flutter this horrid leech of a Scrap Book in the face and eyes of my audience, and say, “This, my friends, is Mark Twain’s Patent Scrap Book.” / Yours, etc. [MTP]. Note: see Twain’s reply on Jan. 24. See insert of Scrapbook. Sanborn would write at least five more letters to Sam through 1882.