December 24 Tuesday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote on a postcard, the verso containg a printed: “A Bright and Happy Christmas,” to niece Ida Langdon.
—‘sh! Ida dear, do not let these sweet maids beguile you of the shivery shuddery secret, known to none but you & me, of the fate of the Tale, the Tear & the Joke That Went Out Seeking the Truth and Met Up With a Bryn Mawr Girl.
Remember the Great Oath of our Order:
“Silence should be seen, not heard.”
These—from one of uncular rank who loves you. / Mark / Riverdale, Xmas Eve, 1901 [MTP].
Sam also wrote to President Theodore Roosevelt.
Not Duncan himself was clearer in his great office.
I think the whole nation would say that, Your Excellency, if a Christmas greeting from it to its President were a custom.
Praise from a stranger to the Head of the Nation could have the look of an impertinence; but I am not a stranger, & so may venture it without offending against propriety, I trust & believe / Mark Twain [MTP].
Sarah Grand (born Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke; 1854-1943), British feminist writer traveling in the U.S., wrote to Sam: “Since you are so kind please expect me on Friday by the 12.15 train from the Grand Central” [MTP]. Note: see Gribben p. 270 who gives her birth year as 1862.
George A. Patterson, at the Hotel Windsor in Hannibal, Mo., wrote a fan letter to Sam asking for his autograph, and confessing he’d gone to No. 216 Hill Street and listened to the occupant give “pleasant reminiscences” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “A first-rate test to be used in the Gospel of Self.”