Beschreibung:

CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE ("Mark Twain"). Autograph manuscript signed of the short story "The Esquimau Maiden's Romance," n.p., n.d. [1893]. 57 PAGES, 8vo., written in ink with revisions throughout on rectos only of sheets of laid paper, signed "Mark Twain" at end, the phrase "6500 words?" in Twain's hand at top of first page, with the spelling "Esquimaux" by Twain in the title, the first page slightly darkened; green morocco gilt chemise and red morocco gilt slipcase by the Adams Bindery (uniform with the binding on the set below) . Using his own name, "Mark Twain," as the narrator, Clemens tells of spending a week at the Arctic Circle (a region he never visited) with a 20-year-old Eskimo girl named Lasca at her village. Forming the main part of the story is Lasca's narrative of her tragic romance with a young man named Kalula. Early in the tale Lasca explains that her life has been ruined by her father's great wealth because people treat her differently and she cannot find a suitor who loves her for herself. Twain writes: "I wondered what her father's wealth consisted of. It couldn't be the house...it couldn't be the furs -- they were not valued. It couldn't be the sledge, the dogs, the harpoons, the boat, the bone fish-hooks and needles, and such things -- no, these were not wealth. Then, what could it be that made this man so rich and brought this swarm of suitors to his house?...'Guess how much he is worth -- you never can!' [exclaimed Lasca]. I pretended to consider the matter deeply, she watching my anxious and laboring countenance with a devouring and delighted interest; and when, at last, I gave it up and begged her to appease my longing by telling me herself how much this polar Vanderbilt was worth, she put her mouth close to my ear and whispered, impressively: 'Twenty-two fish-hooks -- not bone, but foreign -- made out of real iron! ' Then she sprang back dramatically, to observe the effect. I did my level best not to disappoint her. I turned pale and murmured: 'Great Scott!' 'It's as true as you live, Mr. Twain!'..." Lasca tells Twain that two years earlier Kalula came into her life from a remote community (thus not knowing of her father's wealth). The two fell in love and became engaged. Shortly after Kalula is accused of taking a missing fish-hook, is proclaimed guilty after a "trial by water," and is cast adrift on an iceberg. Months later, on the day when all the maidens of the tribe wash their faces and comb their hair, Lasca finds the missing fish-hook in her hairdo. "So ended the poor maid's humble little tale [Twain concludes] -- whereby we learn that since a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man in straightened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy ten cents' worth of fish-hooks and emigrate." This story, "satirizing the inverted ideas that Eskimos and westerners have about wealth" (R. Kent Rasmussen, Mark Twain A to Z , 1995, p. 131), first appeared in Cosmopolitan for November 1893; it was later collected in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Essays and Stories (1900). "The Esquimau Maiden's Romance" is currently available in Twain's Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1891-1910 , in The Library of America series; in the edition of Twain's writings below it is in vol. 23, pp. 48-71. [ With :] CLEMENS, S.L. The Writings . Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1899-1907. 26 vols., 8 o (215 x 145 mm). Red levant morocco, covers with double fillet borders interlaced and incorporating heart-shaped cornerpiece ornaments of green onlaid morocco, clover tools and gilt dots; spines in six compartments, a gilt panel enclosing a citron morocco oval onlay with gilt clover tool, clover corner ornaments and dots in the other compartments; broad red morocco turn-ins framing doublures of green crushed levant morocco gilt with stylized Art Nouveau flower ornaments