Beschreibung:

CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE. Autograph manuscript signed of the humorous sketch "The Leaves & the Fishes," written "On Board Kanawha At Sea, June 26, '02." 3 pages, 8vo, in ink with a few minor corrections on rectos of three leaves, signed with initials at end, some marginal pinholes, slight fold creases, headed at top above title: "With apologies to George Ade ." UNPUBLISHED TWAIN HUMOR A fable in the style of George Ade and based on the Biblical story, written by Clemens while on board the Kanawha , the steam yacht of his good friend and financial adviser Harry Huttleston Rogers (to whom he sent this manuscript). Rogers had put his yacht at the disposal of the Clemens family for a cruise at the end of June 1902 from their Riverdale (on the Hudson) home, around Cape Cod, to York Harbor, Maine (see a letter of the same date from Clemens to Rogers describing the voyage, in Christie's East sale of 12 November 1997, lot 146). The gist of Twain's joke in his sketch is that the real miracle was not the multiplication of the bread and fish, but the fact that the Twelve Disciples had served nearly 5,000 people and lived to tell the tale: "...But now spoke Simon the Tanner, called the Grumbler, and said,...'to feed Five Thousand with so light a Lay-out and have Fragments enough to Stuff Thirty-Seven Thousand left over, is, even in the purview of the Profession, a Corker; yet... this was not the Real Miracle...At his Level Best, and with Waldorf Tips in Sight, one Waiter can Serve but Four Persons and do it Well...whereas we Twelve have passed the Things to Four Hundred apiece, and here we are Alive to Tell about it. What do ye call it? The Miracle of the Occasion, or ain't it...'" Provenance : Purchased from Michael Papantonio: Books and Autographs in April 1942 (with photocopy of his letter giving provenance and typed transcript).