March 19 Friday — Von Beck Canfield wrote from Brooklyn to Sam.
Dear Sir:
In the early years of your travels and writings, there was with you a companion by the name of Hector Kingman—a distant cousin of mine—In one of your books, I am told, you related a story about a “Queen Ann” musket which Kingman when young loaded with stones, etc. (we still have the musket”) Can you tell me, and will you be kind enough to do so—in what book that anecdote occurs? I trust you will at least answer [MTP]. Note: Sam replied Mar. 24.
James B. Craighead for the Stonewall Plantation, Nodena, Ark. wrote to argue against the “canalization” of the Mississippi by dredging, which he felt would be “a great waste of the people’s money.” He asked that “this matter discussed and plainly showin in your serious and argumentative manner may do much to prevent” such a waste [MTP].
John H. Johnston wrote from NYC to praise Clemens for JA, asking what was it about Joan that made her such a wonder? He theorized it was the same thing that happened to Paul on the road to Damascus, to Shakespeare, and Walt Whitman—“they all came into Cosmic Consciousness, a condition we all come into in greater or less degree before we amount to much spiritually or mentally” [MTP].
Leonard C. Whitmire, a 13 year old boy, wrote a fan letter from Waverly, lowa to Sam. His mother a librarian, he’d read all the Hillcrest Ed. of twain’s works and thought Capt. Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven “was the funniest thing...” [MTP]. |