November 30 Sunday – Sam’s 67th Birthday. He wrote from Elmira to Livy, with a proviso to daughter Clara at the top of the letter. “Clara dear, this is to your mother, but you must not risk showing it to her without reading it first yourself.”
Dearheart, it was a beautiful wedding, beautiful; & I was careful, & watchful of my conduct & manners, & was the first to hug the new wife, & was greatly pleased with myself until Ida came & asked for a chance. After the supper I stood a little beyond the couple & received the wash of the reception-file as it broke upon them & flowed my way, just as any authorized & accredited bridesmaid would have done—& this was all volunteer-work on my part, & unasked. I suppose near 500 people—no, more than 500—passed along— everybody I had ever seen in the town in all the years. (To return to the wedding):
When the bride came marching on her father’s arm through the parted sea of faces—marching to the same old Wedding March & through the same faces—(a little faded, a little wrinkled)—33 years blew away from my life, & it was our wedding over again.
And all the evening there was the same joy, the same excitement & hilarity, taken right out of 33 years ago & reproduced unchanged under the same ceilings—lord God, what a sad thing a wedding is!
Sam then related the birthday banquet and the flattering goings on, but was quite mistaken when he said it was a “private dinner” with no mention of it to be in the papers [LLMT 339-40].
Sam inscribed a card at the bottom of the “extra” copper dinner plate from his Nov. 28 birthday celebration to his niece, Miss Ida Langdon:“
Dear Ida the Lesser, / That smile is for you. / Take it with the love of / your Uncle Sam” [Gannett-Tripp Learning Center, Elmira College]. Note: “Ida the Lesser,” (1880-1964) daughter of Charles J. Langdon and Ida Clark Langdon.
Arthur Aronsohn wrote to Sam offering an “obituary” for his Harper’s Weekly contest [MTP].
G.F. Rinehardt wrote to Sam offering an “obituary” for his Harper’s Weekly contest, his entry in a clipping of the Newton Daily Herald, Iowa:
Here lies, as he has never lied,
In narrow bed and dark;
His soul and body side by side,
The Twain an easy Mark [MTP].
The Critic ran “The Sixty-Seventh Birthday of Mark Twain.” Source: The Twainian (Jan. 1940) [Tenney 36].