MT used this signature on his letters to his mother, his brother Orion, Orion's wife Mollie, and other members of the family he grew up in. He also used it when he wrote friends like Will Bowen, people with whom he had grown up in Hannibal. And after he married Olivia Langdon he signed many of his letters to her this way. The letter below was written to his mother and other members of his original family in the spring of 1867. His career as MT is beginning to take off (the book he refers to is the collection of sketches published by Henry Webb as The Celebrated Jumping Frog); he himself is getting ready to take off as well, on the Quaker City expedition that led to Innocents Abroad.
TRANSCRIPT OF LETTER |
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