November 21 Wednesday – In New York, the Clemens family (less Susy) and Grace King, and also possibly William Dean Howells, spent the morning looking at the paintings of a Russian realist of warfare, Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904). From Grace’s Nov. 22 to her sister May:

Nearly all of yesterday morning I spent looking at the Vereshchagin collection of pictures. As Howells says — “they are Tolstoi in paint…perfectly dreadful, but as real as the toothache.” …I was carried away by the whole thing [Bush 44-5].