See what happens when someone who has never been to a place starts
blabbing about the place.  Every so often I need to be reminded of the
Geographer's dictum that the map is not the territory.

On Wed, 2015-04-08 at 14:13 -0400, Carl J. Chimi wrote:
> Why do you say that?  I grew up in Malden, which is just south of Melrose
> and maybe five miles or so north of Boston.  Lowell is maybe 25 miles north
> of Boston.  It would have been relatively easy for Twain to have spent the
> night after the Melrose gig to take a train into Boston for a good hotel,
> and have penned and posted the letter from there.
> 
> The point is that none of these places were more than an hour or so away
> from each other by the B&M railroad, which I'm pretty sure existed in those
> days and catered to people who worked in Boston but commuted from cities and
> towns the trains had by then begun to turn into suburbs.  When I was young,
> the B&M ran from North Station in Boston north through Malden and Melrose
> and on to Lowell, among other destinations.  I think that was true in the
> 1880s.  The train run from Melrose to Boston might have taken a half hour or
> so, and from Boston to Lowell maybe twice that.
> 
> Carl
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Holmes
> Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2015 1:56 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Twain, November 11, 1884 A letter to Pond
> 
> On this date Twain and Cable were in Lowell, MA for a show at Huntington
> Hall.  The day before they were in Melrose, MA, but there is a letter from
> Twain to Pond dated November 11, 1884 from Boston, MA.  Given their
> geographic locations, it doesn't make much sense to me for Sam Clemens to be
> in Boston on that date to post a letter.  This is listed in MTP