Mark Twain: April Fool, 1884
Edited by Leslie Myrick and Christopher Ohge
Clarence C. Buel to Samuel L. Clemens
31 March 1884 • New York, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCLC 41859)
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editorial department the century magazine union square new york
March 31 '84
My dear Mr Clemens:
We have often appealed to you for a contribution to the magazine, and never without getting some response—if no more than
an autographic letter, regretting (more or less) your unwillingness to favor us.[1] Would you be willing, now, to furnish us with a high-class, humorous article of your own make, heretofore unpublished, and
warranted to provoke laughter in a majority of any struck View Page
Full size in new window jury we may select (the jury to have been out at least forty eight hours on a case of minor damages, between next door neighbors)
—^and^ the jury to fix the price to be paid for the article? We should like to have the article in your own beautiful chirogragraphy[2] with every paragraph signed doubly, with your “name of peace” and your nom de guerre. Then if we should happen to lose money on the article as a publication scheme, we might partly reimburse ourselves by cutting
the article up ^manuscript^ into paragraphs and selling them ^to be sold separately^ by auction. The desireability of having the fun equally distributed ^will^ be obvious. In case you do not feel equal to the production of such an article after the mental strain of keeping Lent, at
least favor us with an autographic reply to our proposition and believe that I write with the ^enthusiastic^ sanction of the Editor-in-chief.[3]
Yours truly
C. C. Buel
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Samuel L. Clemens Esq | Hartford | Conn | Immediate
[return address:] editorial department | the century magazine | union square new=york
[postmarked:] new york mar 31 10 pm d 84
[docketed by SLC, in pencil:] Buel
Explanatory Notes
Textual Commentary
▮ Copy-text: The Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
Persons Mentioned
Clarence Clough Buel (1850–1933)
Buel was an editor and author who worked at the New York Tribune and Century Magazine. With Robert Underwood Johnson he coedited the acclaimed Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1887–88).