June 26 Monday – Sam wrote the poem “Apostrophe to Death,” not published in his lifetime:

O Death, O sweet & gracious friend,
I bare my smitten head to Thee, & at thy sacred feet
I set my life’s extinguished lamp & lay my bruised heart

[Tuckey, “The ‘Me’ and the Machine” 135; Scott, Poetry MT 126-7]. Note: Hill gives the title as “An Invocation to Death” (as does Miss Lyon in the entry below) and notes that Sam read the poem to the “cozy group around the fire, and the next day Miss Lyon was ‘weak with the wonder of that poem’ all day long” [110].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: Tonight Mr. Clemens read his poem “An Invocation to Death”, and oh the terrible strength of it. Today the barber came from Peterboro to cut Mr. Clemens’s hair. Today Mr. Faulkner called. Tonight Mr. Clemens read the 13 page letter to Mr. Twichell that had been sent on Saturday and stopped. Full of politics and splendid things. He lays Roosevelt bare. Yes, I am near a throne [MTP TS 70]. Note: This is likely Barry Faulkner (mentioned in the June 28 entry), the same gentleman Miss Lyons met with Witter Bynner (and called him Binny) at Cecchina’s Restaurant in NYC on May 3, as that Mr. Faulkner knew the Thayers in Dublin.

Frederick B. Bess wrote from Peoria, Ill. to Sam, asking if he might use pictures on p. 24, 34 & 36 from LM in his popular history of Peoria [MTP]. Note: Sam’s answer, which Lyon wrote, is cataloged as “On or after June 26”— “on” is not possible due to mail time. Sam’s answer is therefore estimated as ca. July 1.

M. Worth Colwell wrote from N.Y.C. to Sam, proposing “the possibilities of constructing a splendid Comic Opera,” using part of CY, the score being written by Walter Pulitzer who had done two operas which would run next season in New York. He then recalled a meeting with Twain “about seventeen years ago” when he was a little boy, at O.W. Palmer’s house and at Mr. Schumacher’s house in Elmira. He recalled Sam calling him “fillybuster” [MTP]. Note: the 1877 Elmira City Directory lists Peter Schumacher, but no O.W. Palmer. Within a day or two Sam responded (likely an instruction to Isabel Lyon) on the bottom left corner of Cowell’s letter: “refer to Miss Marbury—any arrangement she makes will be satisfactory to Mr.Clemens.”

Louis S. Beckwith wrote to Isabel Lyon. “Your favor of june 22 with the epitaph…has been received. May I trouble you to extend to Mr. Clemens the assurance of my profound appreciation” [MTP]. Note: see June 16nd.

M. Worth Colwell wrote to Sam enclosing a letter of introduction from Mr. Walter Pulitzer. Colwell inquired about staging a comic opera from CY [MTP]. Note: he was referred to Marbury.