Clemens, Samuel L.

Document signed ("Mark Twain"), printed broadside on art vellum (10 x 8 in.; 254 x 203 mm), "To My Guests, Greeting and Salutation and Prosperity,"  Redding, Connecticut, 7 October 1908; very slight marginal soiling, formerly folded. Together with: a printed admission ticket to a musical benefit for the Mark Twain Library (2 1/4 x 4 in.; 60 x 100 mm), [Redding], 21 September 1909, featuring Clara Clemens and her future husband Ossip Gabrilowitsch.

 Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs (sale, Sotheby's, 29 October 1996, lot 320

fundraising by force. After residents of Redding, Connecticut, opened a new public library named in honor of Clemens, he composed the present broadside and had hundreds of copies printed and distributed to raise funds. Confirming that books had been gathered for the library, and money appropriated for salaries and operating expenses, Clemens notes "one detail lacking: a building for the library." He reckons that coercion is the best way to acquire contributions and has levied a "Guests' Mark Twain Library Building Tax." Clemens's scheme entailed a signed souvenir for every donation (but guests of the "more valuable sex" were tax-free). Herewith Clemens provides a receipt for Archibald Henderson. A distinguished North Carolina historian and mathematician, Henderson paid tribute to Clemens in his Mark Twain of 1911.