MT as SLC

This sardonic Christmas greeting was sent in 1890 to Fred Hall, business manager and, because of Webster's illness, effective head of MT's publishing company. It's a good, short example of MT's temper, and his fluency in the language of vituperation; the occasion here is a lawsuit which Webster & Co. had recently lost to someone named Gill. It's also an example of the way MT most often signed letters to both Webster and Hall, younger men who worked for him: "SLC" here -- in other cases, "S.L.C." The shortest of his signatures (except when he would add a postscript to a letter intended for publication and sign the addendum "M.T.") it seems to me to have been used most often when he felt surest of his authority.

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