December 20 Sunday – William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.
It was sweet of you to write me those words about the poem, and about the Bret Harte, and I am glad that the half-truth of the B.H. didn’t quite seem to you a half-lie. What is to be done in such cases? Of course I could have written, though not more sincerely, things that would have left blisters on his fame; but after all, such things had better be left to Judgement Day, which I see more and more use for as I live along. If you read Alfred Russell Wallace’s “Man’s Place in the Universe,” as I’ve just been doing, you will see it too….You ought to read that book; then you would not swear so much at your species. … [MTHL 2: 776-7].
Note: See 1903 entry for Wallace’s book, which Sam was already likely aware of. See source and notes for full letter and details.
George Gregory Smith wrote to his mother on Dec. 21 about Sunday’s lunch, which included some of the Clemenses:
We see a lot of Mark Twain & his family. The more we see of them the better we like them. Mark & his daughter Clara were up to lunch Sunday. So were Sig & Mrs. Cecchi, Lizzie Sherman & her friends the Misses Wallace & Gus & Ella St. Gem. Mark Twain simply let himself loose with his inimitable humor. Never before have I realized how very great a humorist he could be out of his books. He was in his happiest vein. It is almost impossible to quote his humor at the dinner table it is so evanescent but here are a few gems. Speaking of Dr. Brown, the Author of Rab & his friends—“While he went in to kill a patient” “He was a Presbyterian but didn’t know it but it wont be laid up against him hereafter” “He left his conscience done up in a rag at home” &c &c &c [Orth 31].