Dear Mark Twain by Rasmussen R. Kent

Author:Rasmussen, R. Kent
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520261341
Publisher: University of California Press

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96

St Paul Min Nov 24/89

Mark Twain

Hartford Conn.

Dear Sir

I have a Boy four years old and he is full of vim. He wanted me to tell him a story a few days ago and I told him about “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” taken from the Century. He “Caught on” at once and ever since he has been “Hank” The story has to be read and told to him several times a day. He got a piece of clothes line and made a Lasso and using me for a horse he Has a tournament every evening and I wish you could see him drag Sir Sagramour, Sir Galahad and Sir Launcelot out of their saddles. Then Merlin (his mother) has to steal his Lasso and he gets his gun and shoots Sir Sagramour.

Its kind of tough on me to trot up & down “the lists” for Half an hour at a time but then as [“]Hank” is the most beautifull boy you ever saw I don’t mind it For the past two years it has been a fight of about an hour to get him to go to bed Now soon after Dinner he comes to his mother and says “Hank wants his Tights (his night pants) on, and after a Tournament he goes to bed with out a word, all because Hank does that way, and generaly he used to object to saying his prayers But now all we have to say is “Come Hank and say your prayers” and he says “Now I Lay me” In a most touching and reverent manner. We have not been able to get him to go to church for more than a year. He just would not go and we have tried to bribe him with every thing under the sun Candy, Fruit, Buggy rides, Cable rides car rides out to see Little Cousins, but no sir he would not go.

But this morning I wish you could have seen “Hank” take his Mother to Church. You would have thought that like Tom Sawyer he had “wallowed” in churches all his life. The boy’s name is Dean B Gregg, and this is written by his grateful Father

Jesse A Gregg

483 ashland ave

St Paul Minn

Clemens’s comment: A pleasant letter | preserve it | SLC

Extracts from Connecticut Yankee published in the November 1889 issue of Century included all of chapter 39, in which the Yankee (Hank Morgan) takes on heavily armored knights while mounted on a pony—a scene illustrated by two engaging pictures by Daniel Carter Beard.

Jesse Ashton Gregg (1853–1935) was born in what is now West Virginia and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1872, he settled permanently in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was a traveling wholesale hardware dealer (A. N. Marquis, ed., The Book of Minnesotans [Chicago, 1907], 196–197; H. A. Castle, Minnesota: Its Story and Biography [Chicago, 1915], 2:772–773; USCR). His only child, Dean Bradish Gregg (1885–1975), graduated from Minnesota State University and followed his father into the hardware business. He was the father of the author and playwright Jess Gregg (1919–2011).

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