I had hardly begun the job of assembling materials for a study of Mark
Twain's Hartford environment when I encountered the traditionally open-
handed assistance of many institutions and individuals. My sources were
to be primarily the unpublished papers of Mark Twain and his neighbors,
but I had no willow wand to point out little-known collections. Several
libraries helped me search. Those at the University of Illinois, Trinity
College, and Harvard, Yale, and Wesleyan Universities are staffed by more
persons to whom I owe thanks than I can mention here. To Miss Eugenia
M. Henry and Miss Gertrude McKenna of Wesleyan, and to Mrs. Zara
Jones Powers and Mrs. Margaret Neeld Coons of the Historical Manuscripts
Department, Yale University Library, however, I am in special debt; their
generosity far exceeded that literally required by their assignments. I am
indebted also to the Connecticut Historical Society and particularly to its
librarian, Thompson R. Harlow, and his assistant, Miss Frances A. Hoxie,
not only for the location of books and manuscripts but for a hundred other
services for which their knowledge of Hartford's past and present qualified
them. The Watkinson Library of Reference in Hartford (one of the least
used and most highly specialized libraries in the world) is full of rarities
and manuscript collections to which Miss Ruth Kerr patiently introduced me.
The staffs of the Connecticut State, Hartford Public, and Boston Public
Libraries were similarly helpful.

Perhaps the most valuable records of Hartford's community life during
the twenty years of Mark Twain's residence there are in private hands. The
owners of this material, under no obligation to allow me access to their
possessions, were in almost every instance as generous as the librarians in
their assistance. To Bernard DeVoto and to his successor as editor of the
Mark Twain Papers, Dixon Wecter, I am particularly grateful for access
to the magnificent collection of primary sources comprising the literary
capital of the Mark Twain Company. Mrs. N. Preston Breed, until recently
secretary of the Mark Twain Estate, helped me find my way among its many
thousand items. At the time I asked permission, it was not easy or conven-
ient or consonant with policy to let me examine the Mark Twain Papers.
Without that privilege this study would have been abortive.

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