March 8 Monday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Margery H. Clinton.
I am very very glad, dear Plumber, that you & Miss Caroline had such a pleasant time in Washington & had such an enjoyable meeting with the President. You can’t help but like Mr. Taft. The country likes him, & respects him; & I want him to make the best people in the country continue to respect him—& every now & then dislike him—sure proof, in a public servant, that he is doing his whole duty, as he sees it, regardless of personal consequences. He has the natural gifts, the culture, the experience, the training, the sanity, the right-mindedness, the honesty, the truthfulness, the modesty, & the dignity properly requisite in a President of the United States, the most responsible post on the planet. In a word, he possesses every qualification the other one was destitute of.
In selecting Mr. Carpenter as your medium of communication you did just the smart & diplomatic thing. You managed cleverly with the butler, too, But it was a pity you had to wait two hours. You couldn’t help that, but if I had been there it wouldn’t have happened; for by grace of long experience I am hardened to doing, without a pang, lawless things which you wouldn’t be able to essay without considerable shrinkage of principle. But we’d have gone in ahead of the Governor, sure!
We miss you here, & we'll be glad when you & Miss Caroline come back; & not merely glad but very glad.
I am sending you my love; also Miss Lyon’s, who is engaged to the Bishop. I’ve had suspicions this good while [MTP]. Note: Isabel Lyon and Ralph W. Ashcroft became engaged during her stay at her mother’s in Hartford.
Sam also wrote to George B. Harvey.
Dear Colonel:
I suppose the press has done its carefulest best to do itself distinguished credit in its bowings of the one President out & the other one in, but I think it a bettable proposition that you have surpassed them all. Yours are certainly masterpieces, in fitness, fairness, wisdom, depth, candor, compactness), lucidity, grace of style, felic[i]tous expression, &—the right & proper crown for these high excellences—the composure, the gravity & the fine dignity meet for the occasion. Those remarkable essays will bring you many congratulations—I do not want mine to be the last. / Yours ever [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Wallace Irwin (pseudonym “Hashimiro Togo”).
“The aged & mouldy, but good & wise Mark Twain, benefactor of the human race,—say-so of Hon. public—has received the book of Japanese Schoolboy, other benefactor of Hon. human race, & sends very heartiest thanks, & cannot keep from reading it all the time, & chuckling & enjoying. /M. T.” [MTP]. Note: Irwin’s Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy first ran in Collier's Weekly for Aug. 8, 1908, and was made into a book which Clemens here refers to. See Gribben 347.
Sam also began a letter to Mary B. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers, Jr.) that he finished on Mar. 9.
Mariechen dear, I certainly love you, but that is only because I can’t help it; for you are the most vexatious rascal of a niece that helps to inhabit this planet. You are in a class by yourself, & it’s well it is so, for there isn’t room between the horizons for two of you. Two? It would make chaos, & things would stop going.
I’m well aware that when you say you'll do a thing, you really mean it—at the moment. But that’s the end of it. I am like the average person: sometimes I break a promise, but you never keep one. Yes, dear, you are in a class by yourself. I know you are honestly intending to come here, & I know you will gladden me by telling me the day & train; but you know perfectly well that when I go to meet you I shan’t find you at the station, & shan’t learn why, until I’ve grown another bunch or two of white hairs. Now I’ll wait & see. If I am as good a prophet as I always used to was, it will come out just so.
And you did get the picture? I knew it (probably) arrived last year, because I got the bill for it & for the customs & duties, but I guessed it had been misdirected, so I blew the photographer up, & then he blew me up; so he & I stand even, now, & on the same pleasant terms as ever. I had it sent direct to No. 26 for some reason or other, instead of to my house—because I was expecting to be away, I think. It’s a high-art picture—Barnett couldn’t make a failure if he tried.
I’m going down dentisting & banqueting, March 17, & shall dine & sleep at H. H.’s, if he hasn’t raised the price; but that I shall have any glimpse of you, dear, is much too much to expect, for you are the very invisiblest of all the invisibles. But you can’t help that. Land, you’re made so!
You are the hardest lot I know, but I love you all the same. / Your affectionate old / ass of an / Uncle Mark [MTP]. Note H. Walter Barnett, English photographer; see entries Vol. I. Clemens added to this letter the following day.
H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam concerning the St. Patrick’s day dinner for Andrew Carnegie.
Dear Mr. Clemens: / I received in due time your letter of the 4th, of March, A proper time for you to crawl back into politics by way of the Lotos Club.
I have communicated with Mr. Lawrence through his Secretary, and he replies that he can speak for Mr. Lawrence and, in fact, for all the Lotos Club, in Saying that they would obey Mr. Clemens’ commands to the letter, and that they would be very glad to reserve a room for you in the new Club; but think you would prefer to stay at my house while you are in town, all of which I herewith approve.
They are very glad that you have changed your mind, and I imagine that you will receive some communication, either from Mr, Lawrence or his Secretary, concerning the truthfulness of my statement.
I notice that you are to come down on the 17th, on the 10:30 express, arriving at the Grand Central at noon, and also that you expect to find eatables, drinkables and a bed at our Tavern, subject to such changes as it seems pleasant to me. I am going to ask Mrs, Rogers to answer this letter, in order to have it correct. / Yours truly, / H H Rogers [MTHHR 660].
Howells & Stokes wrote to Ralph W. Ashcroft (mis-catalogued to Clemens) [MTP].
Ellis D. Robb wrote from Eldora, Iowa to send Sam a clipping from a Chicago newspaper (not in file) [MTP].
March 8 Monday after - In Redding, Conn. Sam gave instructions for a reply to the Mar. 6 from J.N, Ashburn.
You can at least tell him that I have most heartily enjoyed what he has said about the de Courcy & that it resurrects the interest which I felt in him so many years ago Resurrects it to such a degree that I think I’ll take an easy opportunity to pick up the book & read it again. With before me the fine & respect-commanding picture which you have made of the man who was representing him three centuries later [MTP].