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Forty-three leaves, written on rectos only (but for two leaves which are written on both recto and verso) in purple and black ink, with numerous mansucript insertions and deletions, all in the author's hand. The leaves have been tipped onto stubs and bound circa 1915 by Bradstreet in full red straight-grain morocco with marbled endpapers, along with a frontispiece engraving of Twain, and a custom title-page reading "Mark Twain/Nicodemus Dodge/Chapter XXIII./A Tramp Abroad./Original Autograph Manuscript." The corresponding pages from a copy of the first edition have been bound in at the end along with a custom half-title. Two stages of composition are apparent. The first draft of the manuscript was written on blank paper in purple ink, the pages numbered 1039-1062,1067-1073, and 1087-1095. There was a later revision in black ink, with the pages renumbered in pencil or ink as follows; 780-799, 780(2)-785(2),785 1/2,789(2)-795(2), and 805-813. Expert restoration to the blank margins of the final leaf. A couple of other closed tears have been repaired, just touching a letter or two. Occasional smudging and fingerprinting throughout, else this important manuscript is in very good or better condition in a fine binding with only minor rubbing to the spine ends. The subject of the chapter is, in large part, a reminiscence from Twain's days as a printer's apprentice. Nicodemus Dodge, a seeming yokel from out of town, is hired at the printer's shop where the young Sam Clemens is working. The locals hope to make Nicodemus the butt of their jokes only to find [as Twain notes in a phrase that was ultimately deleted], that they "had fished for a sardine and caught a whale." With the bookplates of William Harris Arnold, the composer Jerome Kern, and the playwright Waring P. Jones. Twain never bothered to reclaim the manuscript for A Tramp Abroad following the book's publication. When the American Publishing Company was dissolved, three or four years after Twain's death, the manuscript was broken into chapters and dispersed. Most, like the present example, were bound by Bradstreet in red or blue morocco. It used to be that these complete manuscript chapters were not considered uncommon but, according to Robert Hirst of the Mark Twain Papers at Berkeley's Bancroft Library, they continue to disappear from the market as they find their way into institutions. With Berkeley's lump purchase of four chapters in 2001, only 16 of the original 56 chapters and appendices remained in private hands [Bancroftiana: Newsletter of the Friends of the Bancroft Library, Volume 118, Spring 2001].
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