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To Thomas Bailey Aldrich, editor of "Every Saturday," Boston,
Massachusetts:
BUFFALO, Jan. 22, 1870.
DEAR SIR,--Please do not publish the note I sent you the other day about
"
Hy. Slocum's" plagiarism entitled "Three Aces"--it is not important
enough for such a long paragraph. Webb writes me that he has put in a
paragraph about it, too--and I have requested him to suppress it. If you
would simply state, in a line and a half under "Literary Notes," that
you mistook one "Hy. Slocum" (no, it was one "Carl Byng," I perceive)
"Carl Byng" for Mark Twain, and that it was the former who wrote the
plagiarism entitled "Three Aces," I think that would do a fair
justice without any unseemly display. But it is hard to be accused of
plagiarism--a crime I never have committed in my life.
Yrs. Truly
MARK TWAIN.
But this came too late. Aldrich replied that he could not be
prevented from doing him justice, as forty-two thousand copies of
the first note, with the editor's apology duly appended, were
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