March 7 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Jessie A. Fowler, 10.30. Californian’s Tale. Sloan’s Thurs Eve. Club 9 p.m. Cromwell & Abby” [NB 44 TS 6].
As noted above, Sam underwent a phrenological character reading (reading shapes on the head) with Jessie Allen Fowler (1856-1932). Gribben offers that she gave Sam a copy of New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology (1859) by Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887) and her father, Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811-1896). Sam wrote on the endpaper: “Clemens, 1901” [Gribben 239]. Sam had his head read in London in 1872 by Lorenzo Fowler.
The New York Times, Mar. 8, p. 7, reported on Sam’s reading this evening:
WHAT IS DOING IN SOCIETY.
…
The Thursday Evening Club, which met last night at the residence of Prof. W.M. Sloane, 109 East Sixty-ninth Street, had an unusually interesting programme, as Mark Twain read an unpublished story, entitled, “The California Friend.” Mr. Clemens is a personal friend of Prof. Sloane and Mrs Sloane. Sherry’s Hungarian band also played during the evening, and a collation was served. Among the guests of the Sloanes, besides the club members, there were several from out of town, and among these were Mr. and Mrs. Allan Marquand of Princeton, Mr. and Mrs. Junius Morgan, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Maitland, and Mr. and Mrs. Paul Leicester Ford. There were also present Mr. and Mrs. G.R. Schieffelin, Nicholas Kane, the Misses Kane, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Dana, G.V.N. Baldwin, Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Alexander, Eliot Gregory, Evert Janssen Wendell, Mr. A.M. Dodge, Mr. and Mrs. H.H. Marquand, Mr. and Mrs. C.E. Pellew, Mr. and Mrs. Pierre Mali, Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Post, Mr. and Mrs. Lydig, Chandler Robbins, Mr. and Mrs. Bache Emmet, Mr. and Mrs. W. Tiffany, Eugene Delano, and Mr. and Mrs. Francis McN. Bacon. [Note: Fatout also lists a reading for this club on Jan. 24, 1901 but does not give text; MT Speaking 668].
Joseph B. Gilder of the Century Co. wrote to Sam (not posted): “This powerful poem doesn’t seem to have had the slightest effect on Duty, Destiny, or any other of our D__D’d friends. I hope better things of your powerful prose in he N.A.R.” [MTP].
Rev. Washington Gladden of the First Congregational Church in Columbus, Ohio, wrote again to Sam in defense of Rev. Ament: “I can read; but I cannot read into Mr. Ament’s dispatch any such meaning as you find there. What Mr. Ament was doing not only ‘follows Chinese custom’ but is ‘warranted’ by every ‘code of civilization’ with which I am familiar….Most people in this country know that our missionaries are not robbers” [MTP].
Pratt & Whitney per L.B. Morgan wrote to Sam asking for payment once again on the old, moldy 1890 debt of $1,744.20 done for planning a factory for the Paige typesetter; the “old management” had allowed the debt to sit out of “the kindly regard” held for Twain, but in view of the “new conditions and changes” they wanted payment [MTP].