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Details
An unpublished manuscript
Mark Twain, 26 June 1902
CLEMENS, Samuel ("Mark Twain," 1835-1910). Autograph manuscript signed, "The Loaves & the Fishes," written "On Board Kanawah At Sea," 26 June 1902.
Three pages, 197 x 123mm (pinholes at top left creased corners).
An unpublished Mark Twain story: a fable based on the Biblical story, written by Clemens while on board the Kanawha, the steam yacht of his good friend and financial adviser Harry Huttleston Rogers (to whom he sent this manuscript). Rogers had put his yacht at the disposal of the Clemens family for a cruise at the end of June 1902 from their Riverdale (on the Hudson) home to York Harbor, Maine (see a letter of the same date from Clemens to Rogers describing the voyage, in Christie's East sale of 12 November 1997, lot 146). The gist of Twain's joke in his sketch is that the real miracle was not the multiplication of the bread and fish, but the fact that the Twelve Disciples had served nearly 5,000 people and lived to tell the tale: "But now spoke Simon the Tanner, called the Grumbler, and said ... 'to feed Five Thousand with so light a Lay-out and have Fragments enough to Stuff Thirty-Seven Thousand left over, is, even in the purview of the Profession, a Corker; yet ... this was not the Real Miracle ... At his Level Best, and with Waldorf Tips in Sight, one Waiter can Serve but Four Persons and do it Well ... whereas we Twelve have passed the Things to Four Hundred apiece, and here we are Alive to Tell about it. What do ye call it? The Miracle of the Occasion, or ain't it...'" Provenance: E. W. Evans, purchase from Michael Papantonio: Books and Autographs April 1942 (with photocopy of his letter giving provenance and typed transcript) – Christie's East, 5 December 1997, lot 145 – Nick Karanovich (his sale, Sotheby's, New York, 19 June 2003, lot 145).