Mr. Hirst--

My memory erred with regard to the framing and hanging of the letter. I
doubt
that it is the one in Virginia unless Levy read Tom Sawyer and wrote
immediately after. There is also the matter of the reference to "Hattie" in
the quotation she published.

The quotation below is from "920 O'Farrell Street" (page 18), Harriet Lane
Levy (1947). It has been reprinted in the past few years

...I wrote to the great for autographs and they responded with a name,
sometimes with a line. Everybody answered. Once when I wrote, asking for the
origin of the magic carpet referred to in Keramos--the subject of our high
school study-- Longfellow answered with a long letter, which I framed
between
glass and swung on a slender bronze crane from the mantel in my bedroom. I
wrote as to a friend, occasionally permitting humor to enter into my note of
request. To Samuel Clemens in Hartford I told of my appreciation of Tom
Sawyer, reminding him that its author was also a resident of Hartford, and
asking that Mr. Clemens use his persuasion to induce Mark Twain to send me
his autograph. When the reply came I sailed the air, for he wrote, "I hunted
him up, Miss Hattie, and got it without difficulty," and signed two names:
Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain.

        Levy goes on to list a few other respondents, including Whittier and
Josh Billings. She alludes to "poets and Presidents" who answered her
request
for an autograph.

        She is an interesting figure in her own right. Alice B. Toklas lived
next door and Levy was her travelling companion on vacations. Levy got
Toklas
to go to Paris, and the rest of that story is the subject of some other
listserve.

Dennis Kelly