Mark Twain: April Fool, 1884
Edited by Leslie Myrick and Christopher Ohge
Full size in new window
Sara T. Kinney to
Samuel L. Clemens
1 April 1884 • Boston, Mass.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCLC 41991)
23 Beacon Street,
Boston.[1]
Dear Mr. Clemens,
I have just 'done myself proud' by guessing the following riddle (conceived, by the way, in England)—and send it to you at once—hoping it may serve you well in some of the emergencies of life to which we are all liable.
Riddle A by ||[2]
View Page
Full size in new windowAnd I improve this opportunity to say that it would afford me great pleasure to be able to add your autograph to my valuable
collection &c. &c.
Yrs Very Truly
Sara T. Kinney
View Page
Full size in new window
Mr. Samuel Clemens | Farmington Ave—& Forest St | Hartford—Conn—
[postmarked:] boston apr 1 7 30 am mass 84 [docketed by SLC, in pencil:] Kennedy[3]
Explanatory Notes
Textual Commentary
▮ Copy-text: MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
Persons Mentioned
Sara T. Kinney (1842–1922)
Sara Thomson Kinney, the wife of John Coddington Kinney, was active in the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Women's National Indian Association. In 1884, after attending the second annual Lake Mohonk Conference for Friends of the Indian, she joined the WNIA Home-Building and Loan Committee, whose purpose was to encourage Native American women to assimilate into white society.