April 14 before – Dr. Richard H. Jesse, President of the University of Missouri, wrote to Sam:

MY DEAR MR. CLEMENS,—Although you have received the degree of doctor of literature last fall from Yale, and have had other honors conferred upon you by other great universities, we want to adopt you here as a son of the University of Missouri. In asking your permission to confer upon you the degree of LL.D. the University of Missouri does not aim to confer an honor upon you so much as to show her appreciation of you. The rules of the University forbid us to confer the degree upon any one in absentia. I hope very much that you can so arrange your plans as to be with us on the fourth day of next June, when we shall hold our Annual Commencement [MTB 1166].

April 14 Monday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Mme. Elisabeth Brochmann (Brachmann?) in Norway.

Don’t let Chatto & Windus, publishers, London, find you out, & there’ll not be the least harm done! But if they complain, tell them I authorized you, & they must do as the new negro song says: “Go ’way back an’ set down!” (I gave them entire authority over all translations 25 years ago, but that was only to put work on their shoulders & relieve my own) [MTP].

Sam also began a reply to Dr. Richard H. Jesse of the University of Missouri. Sam has dated this letter with Apr. 14 and also Apr. 19, both dates following the letterhead. Jesse’s announcement of a LL.D. degree to be conferred on June 4 had arrived in Riverdale sometime during Sam’s cruise.

The distinguished honor offered me by the University of Missouri touches me deeply, & is peculiarly gratifying, coming as it does, from my native State. I accept, with sincere thanks.

I will explain that I was absent on a yachting cruise in the West Indies when your letter came; & since I reached home I have not known how to reply because we were not able to find out whether we should be in America in June or on vacation in Venice. I am to-day informed by the only competent authority, that I am not going abroad this summer—for which verdict I am properly grateful, & I now hasten to make to you my too long delayed response.

[After his signature:]

Can I use the gown, hood, & mortar-board I used at Yale? If not, will you be so kind as to make one of the students order the proper rainment for me & tell the tailor to send me the bill now, without waiting, (but not the clothes), for I am uncertain in my ways & likely to die at the most inconvenient time, & I shall have freight enough when I go, & shouldn’t want a tailor’s reproaches added [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Robert Underwood Johnson.

There’s nothing in it that I object to. When is it to appear?

I rather expect that if we do not decide on a summer vacation in Europe I shall be out in that region in the early days of June. The University of Missouri offers me an LL.’D., (June 9), & if within the next ten days we elect to summer-it in America, I’ll accept & go out there & fetch it [MTP]. Note: the degree was conferred in a ceremony on June 4.

Sam also wrote a note to H.H. Rogers.

“Mrs. Clemens bought the Casey house, near Tarrytown, while we were away, for what the Caseys paid for the land the house stands on—$45,000. There are 19 acres, & everything in good shape. We are very well satisfied. Mrs. C. paid $2,500 down, & we must pay the rest ten or fifteen days hence.”

Sam detailed stock sales and other monies needed to complete the sale, and if he needed more cash would borrow from Rogers. He then completed the letter with several items of finances and personal matters:

I wrote the Funston article yesterday, for the North American (May number.) It is short, & worth only $600. But last month’s article brought $1,000, & I put it up on a letter of credit for Clara, who sails in the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, April 22.

We have offered our Hartford house for sale at $75,000—bottom price $60,000. Mrs. Clemens puts her foot down, there.

There’s an applicant for this Riverdale house for the summer months. We are willing. The agent has taken charge of the matter, & hopes to get more than the summer is worth. We are willing.

It was a grand trip in the yacht—it couldn’t be improved on. I am expecting to look in on you as soon as I get the letters cleared off [MTHHR 484-5].

Note: the facts that Livy would purchase a home in Sam’s absence and her “foot down” about the Hartford house sale, shows her to be at least an equal partner in the financial dealings of the family. Hill writes that “Olivia decided, after qualms of indecision, to buy a house from Flora McDonald Casey…the primary instinct at work was her need to have a ‘home ’” [43-4]. The Clemens never lived in the Tarrytown house, which they rented after choosing to go to Italy for Livy’s health in 1903; Sam sold the house in Dec. 1904. Sam engaged Franklin G. Whitmore in Hartford, and the William H. Hoyt & Co., N.Y.C. to advertise the Farmington Ave. house (see Apr. 19). “A Defence of General Funston” ran in the May issue of the North American Review. Sam would write a PS to it on Apr. 16