Mark Twain: April Fool, 1884

The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing

2017, Volume 38

Edited by Leslie Myrick and Christopher Ohge

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Ozias W. Pond to Samuel L. Clemens
31 March 1884 • New York, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCLC 41972)

everett house,

union aquare, new york,

c. h. kerner.

S. L. Clemmens, Esq. Hartford Conn.

Dear Mr. Clemmens,

It is possible that you may not remember me, as I am somewhat hard to remember, being possessed of no personal deformities that would distinguish me from the great “majority.” I have had the honor of an introduction however, as my brother, Major Pond will testify. I have long wished to add your autograph to my somewhat valuable collection & therefore take the liberty of asking if you will kindly oblige me?

Yours very truly

Ozias W. Pond

P. S. I have a friend who also desires very much to be favored, but is too modest to make the request. Therefore, if it is not intruding on your generosity, may I hope that you will send two copies?

O.W.P

Textual Commentary

▮ Copy-text: MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Persons Mentioned

James B. Pond (1838–1903)

James Burton Pond was a decorated Civil War officer and lecture manager who fought with John Brown in 1846 in Kansas, and against Quantrill's gang in Missouri. In 1874 he formed the Pond Lyceum Bureau, having spent some years managing acts on his own in Salt Lake City, followed by a stint with the Redpath Lyceum Bureau. By 1884 he had managed Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Matthew Arnold, and George Washington Cable. Pond wrote several books and articles about his experiences on the lecture circuit, including A Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher (1877) and Eccentricities of Genius (1900).

Ozias W. Pond (1852–1892)

Ozias Walter Pond was a younger brother of James B. Pond and a manager of musical acts and lecturers for the Redpath Lyceum Bureau. In 1883 he accompanied Henry Ward Beecher on a farewell lecture tour that extended into the spring of 1884. On 1 April he was with Beecher on the road between platform stops in Harrisburg and Cincinnati. Although in his letter to Clemens he claimed a meager acquaintance, he would soon come to know both Clemens and Cable very well—in January 1885 he accompanied the pair on their lecture tour in his brother's place. At the end of the month, however, he was forced to leave the tour due to illness.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Sponsored by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.ISSN 2167-1257

The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing

2017, Volume 38