In 1940 DeVoto published a manuscript about Joseph H. Twichell’s encounter with a profane ostler which he described as “one of the random pieces that preceded Mark’s sustained work on the Autobiography,” suggesting that it was “probably written in the 1880s and at one time formed part of a long manuscript—I cannot tell which one” (MTE, 366–72). But this anecdote was not part of any draft of the autobiography. It was written for Life on the Mississippi (1883) and removed from the manuscript before publication.

22. 6 May 1880 to OC, Letters 1876–1880.

23. AD, 30 Aug 1906. Clemens said that he made this discovery while writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but there is good reason to suppose that he experienced the same difficulty in 1871 while writing Roughing It, even though he did not then know to “pigeonhole” the manuscript until the “tank” had refilled itself. See RI 1993, 823.

24. Back in 1873 he had hired Samuel C. Thompson to accompany him to England as his secretary. Thompson was a novice at shorthand, and he was dismissed almost immediately when Clemens became dissatisfied with this “first experience in dictating.” He later explained, “I remember that my sentences came slow & painfully, & were clumsily phrased, & had no life in them—certainly no humor.” It also did not help that he found Thompson to be a humorless and unpleasant companion (N&J1, 517–18, Thompson’s notebook is on 526–71; “To Rev. S. C. Thompson,” SLC 1909a, 12). A later experiment with dictation came in the spring of 1882 when Clemens hired Roswell Phelps, a trained stenographer, to accompany him and James Osgood on their trip down the Mississippi. Phelps recorded Clemens’s (and others’) remarks at the time, but Clemens did not dictate to him when writing Life on the Mississippi (N&J2, 516–18, Phelps’s notebook is transcribed on 521–74).

25. N&J3, 112. Clemens would eventually reproduce much of Susy’s biography in the final form of his autobiography, beginning with AD, 7 Feb 1906.

26. Grant 1885a, 1885b, 1885c, and 1886; “Grant’s Last Stand,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 6 Feb 1894, unknown page; AD, 26 Feb 1906.

27. Redpath to SLC, 4 May 1885, CU-MARK; 5 May 1885 to Redpath, MiU-H. See 4 Apr 1891 to Howells, NN-BGC, in MTHL, 2:641, quoted below in the section on the Florentine Dictations. Clemens’s earlier letter containing the proposal that Redpath accepted has not been found.

28. 17 June 1885 to Pond, NN-BGC; 12 Sept 1885 to Redpath, CU-MARK.

29. 11 Sept 1885 to Beecher, draft in CU-MARK. Beecher was then preparing a eulogy for Grant to be delivered in Boston on 22 October 1885, and had written Clemens for biographical information; in particular, he wanted to know if Grant had been “a drunkard for a time” (Beecher to SLC, 8 Sept 1885, CU-MARK).

30. 16 Nov 1886 to Fairbanks, CSmH, in MTMF, 258; 3 Aug 1887 to Webster, NN-BGC; 3 and 4 Feb 1887 to Smith, ODaU (the “details” referred to have not been identified). Clemens returned to the topic of Grant’s Memoirs in the Autobiographical Dictations for 6 February, 28 May, 1 June, and 2 June 1906. The last of these included remarks about Fred Grant, but not his letter of 22 July 1887 (TS in CU-MARK), which disputed the accuracy of the financial statement from the Webster Company accountant.

31. OC to SLC, 5 Dec 1887, typed copy of the original letter made by or for Paine, given to the Mark Twain Papers by Anne E. Cushman in 2004.