October 3 Thursday – At 8 a.m. Clemens, Joe Twichell, and possibly others met at the foot of West 35th Street, and boarded the Kanawha. H.H. Rogers may have already been on board. The yacht cruised off of Sandy Hook, N.J. to view the heat of the America’s Cup race, which had been thought to be the third in the best of five, but was the second. The heat this day began at 11 a.m. and finished at 3:16 p.m. [NY Times, Oct. 4, p.1, “Columbia Wins A Decisive Victory.” The third race was the next day, Oct. 4 [MTHHR 474n1]. Note: it is not known whether the men stayed on board overnight to see the third heat, but it is possible.
Sam wrote to Lyman J. Gage, Secretary of the Treasury, Washington, D.C
MARK TWAIN’S JOKE
———
Humorist Asks Secretary Shaw for Old
Bonds and Greenbacks to Use
as Fuel
WASHINGTON, Oct. 21— The following letter was received at the Treasury Department this morning:
New York City, Oct. 3.
The Hon. The Secretary of the Treasury.
Washington, D.C
Sir:
Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached an altitude which puts them out of reach of literary persons in straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order:
45 tons best old dog Government bonds, suitable for furnace, gold 7 per cents 1864 preferred;
12 tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking;
8 barrels seasoned 25 & 50-cent postal currency, vintage of 1866, eligible for kindlings.
Please deliver with all convenient dispatch at my house in Riverdale at lowest rates for spot cash & send bill to
Your obliged servant
Mark Twain
who will be very grateful & will vote right.
Note: curiously, this letter ran a year later in the Oct. 22, 1902 New York Times, p.8, as “Mark Twain’s Joke” (above) and states it was sent to “Secretary Shaw,” (Leslie M. Shaw 1848-1932, who was in the post from 1902 to 1907) not his predecessor, Lyman J. Gage. The letter from MTP lists only the Secretary, but not by name, and is on Riverdale on the Hudson letterhead, headed “N.Y. City, Oct.3”—but Sam was in Maine on that date in 1902. NB 45 TS 29 for Oct. 5, 1902 reveals Sam sent the “winter-fuel letter to Duneka for Weekly.” Perhaps Duneka supplied the NYC heading. If it was written this day in 1901, then he wrote it on board the Kanawha, probably as a result of some joking remarks by H.H. Rogers, Twichell or others, and perhaps sent to the Times a year later. Sam had applied to Gage before to request speedy passage through customs after returning to the U.S. in 1900. Even stranger, the letter, sightly edited and dated October 13, 1902, was collected in The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1903).