March 12 Friday — In a note in the L-A MS, Clemens wrote, “About 10th (suspicious) Duneka examined securities. Reported 12th. Note: securities? Hill writes of the Lyon-Ashcroft MS:
Ashcroft was “guilty” of selling Clemens Spiral Pin stock, of having fired Horace Hazen, of having presented a number of legal documents for Clemens’ signature which the forgetful old man could not remember signing, and of having an excessively florid prose style.
But the Clemens family comes off more poorly than the Ashcrofts do in the “Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript”; all three Clemenses were illogical and lacking in compassion, and Clara’s and Jean’s harassment of the defenseless and high-strung secretary and her mother was needlessly vicious. The manuscript is a geyser of bias, vindictiveness, and innuendo. It proceeds in no systematic order, and it ends with the quite irrelevant and almost irrational comment about Peary and Cook both discovering the North Pole. It is obvious that Mark Twain was unable to maintain comic distance from the material or intelligent involvement with it [231-2]
William Dean Howells wrote to Sam that he’d “found about 40 or 50” of Sam’s letters, which were “of the time when this night was blackest with you, and I can’t read them. But I know you can, because you have the best courage of any man, and because as the years pass...our grief for the lost, which is all we have left of them, and like to feel our hearts bleed again” [MTP; not in MTHL]. Note: “Ans Mch 13”
Sam’s new guestbook (all signed):
| Name | Address | Date | Remarks |
| Beatrice M. Benjamin | New York | Mar. 12, 1909 | |
| Alexander D.B. Pratt | do. | do. | |
| Wm Evarts Benjamin | New York & Ardsley | Mar 12th '09 | * note below |
William Evarts Benjamin wrote in the Remarks column; “As one drives from the station the chief mark on the landscape and as one leads a lazy loafish take it easy sort of life here I should call it Easymark. Even the water don’t rush here, it sorter saunters from the tap, seems to have that tired feeling and gives a graceful gurgle if you stop it. But you can get wet!”
Frederick A. Duneka wrote to Sam, enclosing a list of Sam’s Safe Deposit box in the Produce Exchange. Sam suspected Ashcroft of taking the organization papers of the Mark Twain Co. from the box. Duneka’s letter is not extant but referred to in his Lyon-Ashcroft MS section XIV. It turned out that Sam’s fear about the papers giving rights to his real estate, and not simply his literary assets, was ill founded.
Nannie Manook wrote from London to ask Sam to sign the enclosed postcard [MTP].
March 12 after — In Redding, Conn. Sam replied to Norman Libby’s Mar. 10 query as to whether he intended JA as biography or fiction. Sam wrote on the bottom of Libby’s letter:
“never departed from history when I make Joan speak or make any statements about her—It has been my experience that all intelligent persons know that it is history that they cannot get for themselves on this side of the water, as it is not translated” [MTP].
William Dean Howells wrote from N.Y.C. to Sam.
My dear Clemens: / I have found about 40 or 50 more of your letters, which will be about all, I think. Shall I send them, or bring them when I come to see you after Pilla gets home? You know you said I might come. The letters are of the time when this night was blackest with you, and I can’t read them. But I know that you can, because you have the best courage of any man, and because as the years pass we like to renew our grief for the lost, which is all we have left of them, and like to feel our hearts bleed again. We pretend otherwise, but this is the truth, and it is strange enough. The anguish of another wrings our hearts, but we can bear our own after while. Yours ever / W.D. Howells [MTHL 2: 841-2]. Note: Sam’s letters referred to here were likely during the years after Susy’s death.