May 27 Saturday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam replied to Hubert H. Bancroft of San Francisco, who had written on May 21 inviting Sam to visit.

I thank you sincerely for the tempting hospitalities which you offer me, but I have to deny myself, for my wandering days are over, & it is my desire & purpose to sit by the fire the rest of my remnant of life & indulge myself with the pleasure & repose of work—work uninterrupted and unmarred by duties or excursions.

A man who like me is going to strike 70 on the 30 , of next November has no business to be flitting around the way Howells does—that shameless old fictitious butterfly. (But if he comes, don’t tell him I said it, for it would hurt him & I wouldn’t brush a flake of powder from his wing for anything. I only say it in envy of his indestructable youth, anyway. Howells will be 88 in October.) [MTP]. Note: boxed in the left corner of the letter: “In ans. to an invitation from Mr. H.H. Bancroft to visit him in San Francisco. Mr. Henry James had just been there for a week.” Howells was born in 1837, two years after Sam.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Mr. Clemens doesn’t like June bugs. When one was butting and banging around the card table tonight he wanted “to butter and swallow it” [MTP TS 61].

Dr. John Allen Wyeth, NYC wrote to Sam. “In writing a sketch which deals in a measure with my native section, Northern Alabama, in speaking of the Hon. Jeremiah Clemens, am I correct in referring to him as your uncle?” [MTP]. Note: Someone, likely Miss Lyon, wrote on the note, “Cousin of Mr. Clemens’s father.” There were several Jeremiah Clemenses, including Jeremiah Clemens (1732-1811) Sam’s great grandfather. None found could be traced to Ala.

The New York Times, p. BR 347 ran a squib announcing Harpers would reissue Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old in the middle of June.