September 22 Saturday – Homer Bassford’s article, “The Friends of Mark Twain’s Boyhood,” ran in Saturday Evening Post. Tenney: “Charley Curts remembers school and exploring the cave with Sam Clemens, and describes him as not lazy, but helpful to others; a good story-teller, Sam used to tell the Arabian Nights stories to groups of his friends: Curts, Ed Pierce, Bill Nash, Ben Coontz, ‘Gene Freeman, Ruel Gridley, Tom Blankenship, and John Meredith. Edward Pierce remembers when he, Sam, and the others rolled large stones down the hill, once smashing a boulder through the wall of the mill. When MT visited Hannibal (in 1882), he visited three churches in the company of Col. RoBards, whom he dismayed by claiming each as his old Sunday school” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Seventh Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1983 p. 168].

William Archer reviewed The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories in the London Morning Leader. Macnaughton gives us an excerpt:

Perhaps you wonder to find Mark Twain among the moralists at all? If so, you have read his previous books to little purpose. They are full of ethical suggestion. Sometimes, it is true, his moral decisions are a little summary. Often, nay, generally, his serious meaning is lightly veiled in paradox, exaggeration, irony. But his humor is seldom entirely irresponsible for many pages together, and it often goes very deep into human nature. Let me merely remind you of that exquisite page—one of many!—in “Huckleberry Finn,” where Huck goes through his final wrestle with his conscience as to the crime of helping to steal Jim out of slavery [144].