May 26 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: This afternoon Mr. Thayer called, after he left Mr. Clemens said nice things about him, and then said he had seen him a quarter of a century ago when he went up to Hartford to make a black and white sketch of Mr. Clemens for the Century. Mr. Clemens was fighting the beginning of a cold so he took his whiskey bottle, and he said that in an hour he was very happily and comfortably drunk, but the black and white sketch wasn’t an entire success.

Tonight Mr. Clemens read more of the microbe story. What an imagination! [MTP TS 61]. Note: see Feb. 24, 1882 for Thayer’s sketch which was to go with an article in the Century by William Dean Howells.

Harper & Brothers replied to Sam’s request, handed to them by Major Leigh, for books “in popular language on microbes, bacilli, etc., one that brings all science up to date and that can be understood by ordinary people.” They referred him to William Wood & Co., NYC medical book publishers, or Lea Brothers, Phila. [MTP].