Letter from Bernard De Voto, Cambridge, to Edward Wagenknecht, 1943 December 24 : typescript signed.

Being unable to help Wagenknecht as he is too busy but promising that "Mrs. N. Preston Breed" will look through the Mark Twain papers and notify Wagenknecht if she finds anything regarding a suppressed chapter of "Life on the Mississippi"; informing on the negative circumstances surrounding his giving up the topic being considered by Wagenknecht; permitting Wagenknecht to quote from the material De Voto will send; promising that Mrs. Breed will send several items after "the Christmas mail has subsided" and begging that he be careful with them, though he can keep them as long as he likes; asking him not to quote "from notebook 16 page 40 the entry about the balloon or the long entry in negro dialect", as he himself wants to write about them; discussing the items from the Twain collection he will send; informing that the manuscript of "Life on the Mississippi" is in the Morgan Library; expecting that Willis Wager may have information about the suppressed chapter; wishing him luck at his new job at Northwestern University but remembering Evanston, Illinois poorly.