December 30 Sunday – The New York Herald ran a facsimile of Twain’s handwritten salutation from Mark Twain that had been sent originally to the Red Cross Society, and returned at Sam’s request. The facsimile published was dated Dec. 31, 1900; the copy to the Red Cross Society was originally dated Nov. 29, 1900, for use in a series of watch-meetings on New Year’s Eve, organized by the group’s manager, Frank D. Higbie, nephew of Calvin H. Higbie, Sam’s old mining partner.
The message was in the form of a toast intended to be read along with other messages by famous people. When Sam discovered sometime after Nov. 29 that the Red Cross Society was using his name in its advance announcements without authorization, he asked them to either publish the other names or return the piece, which was blatantly anti-imperialist and a minority position. The piece was returned and he then submitted it to the New England Anti-Imperialist Society and the Herald, which ran the facsimile on p.7, headlined : “New Century Greeting Which Twain Recalled” [Zwick, “Who Wrote the Couplet? etc.” MTJ 27.1 (Spring 1889): 34].
A salutation-speech from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth, taken down in short-hand by Mark Twain:
I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonored from pirate-raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, & the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap & a towel, but hide the looking-glass. / Mark Twain / New York, Dec. 31 1900. [Note: The New England Anti-Imperialist League printed the salutation on small cards and distributed it nationally; see Feb. 8, 1901 entry].
At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam wrote “I’m home again” on a card to Augustus T. Gurlitz [MTP: MS Sotheby Parke-Bernet, N.Y. catalog Dec. 11, 1990, Item 382,].
Sam also wrote to Pamela Moffett, enclosing D.B. Montgomery’s Dec. 26 letter seeking genealogical information. “Many thanks for your Xmas greeting [not extant]—& wishing you health & prosperity. If you like, you can answer this inquirer. I’m not able, as I am ignorant of the subject & not interested” [MTP].
Isabel Lyon wrote for Sam to the Australian Society of New York. “Mr. S. L. Clemens desires to thank the Australian Society of New York cordially for the valued compliment of their invitation, and at the same time express his regret that he is so circumstanced as to be unable to accept it” [MTP: The Advertiser (Adelaide, South Australia, 21 Feb. 1901, p. 5]. Note: the group made a second attempt, to which Sam replied on Jan. 2, 1901; see entry.
Abner Cheney Goodell (1831-1914), lawyer and historian of Salem Mass. wrote to Sam, responding to his article, “A Greeting from the 19th Century to the 20th Century” the same day it ran in the N.Y. Herald.
Dear Sir: / Will you forgive a stranger for obtruding upon your scant leisure this expression of gratitude for your “Salutation” to the incoming century.
In my opinion it is, so far as I know, the best thing you ever did. Indeed, I rank it with Lincoln’s immortal speech at Gettysburg.
It has done me good. I have stopped taking medicine, now that somebody has done something effectual to rouse the public from their chronic apathy in this universal reign of terror.
It is a great strain upon one’s self-confidence to continue to harbor the conviction that he is right, and all the “powers that be” of Christendom are wrong in their fearful onslaughts upon human beings.
And if wrong, how appalling the magnitude of the error of crime!
You have cheered me. You reassure me against the depressing doubt of my own sanity, and you encourage me to believe there is yet hope that old Waller’s sentiment, echoed by Charles Sumner in the title-page of his first great plea for universal peace, may prevail throughout the world…[Cohen 29].