April 23 Thursday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Dr. Wilson L. Hawkes in York, Maine, upset by being overcharged per visit.
I have just received testimony of a quality much better than your own, [see Apr. 6 from E.D. Twombly] that your regular charge is one dollar a visit. I gather from this that you have two prices—one for the summer visitor & the other for the old resident—a high price & a low price, the high price a robbery—robbery by custom. You might as rationally charge me four prices because I am bow-legged or white-headed, & excuse it on the plea that it is your “custom.” Self-invented custom is not a legal defence of crime, & I am not willing to submit to it. I shall expect you to return $96 to me at your early convenience—& I shall have then paid you for as many as 20 entirely unnecessary visits—visits which you well knew to be unnecessary.
I expect you to pay that $96, but not in the way of compromise. I shall not spare you a stripe less on that account when I am ready to settle with you in my way of settling with your sort—i.e., in print [MTP]. Note: the testimony may have come from the Seward family or from William Dean Howells.
Sam’s notebook: “See Ap. 4. / St. George Soc./ Shakesperes birthday I always liked his remark when he picked up the garter: Dieu et droit qui mal y pense.—meaning Put none but Americans on guard to— / Delmonico’s 6.30 (go at 8.30)” [NB 46 TS 14]. Note: this may be a whimsical remark he planned on using.
The St. George Society celebrated it’s 117th anniversary banquet at Delmonico’s, President Robert H. Turie presiding. The New York Times, Apr. 19, p.7, “St. George’s Society Dinner” had announced Mark Twain would be a speaker at this event of Apr. 23, along with Gen. Baden-Powell, the Inspector General
of the British Army, Mayor Seth Low, Gen. Adna Romanza Chaffee and Sir Percy Sanderson. Fatout also lists this speaking event, but gives no particulars [MT Speaking 673].
The New York Times, p. 9, “A Mark Twain Play” reported on the revival of Frank Mayo’s Puddn’head Wilson play by the Murray Hill Stock Company. After Mayo’s death on June 8, 1896, his son took over for a short time but the play had not been done since.