July 3 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Jean and Teresa started for Norfolk early this morning. Dear Col. Higginson has sent me a copy of the beautiful little sketch that his daughter wrote—“The Drum Beat”. I cannot read it without a gush of grieving tears. Mr. Clemens came down at 3:00 o’clock today with the day’s work finished. In 3 days he has done the work of 5 days—and it is so delicious. He read it to me as we sat in the living room. The appeal of the “duplicate” to be freed from his coating of flesh, so that his spirit can roam, is so beautiful and so moving, and fills you crashing full of the drive to go and go just as that spirit wishes to do. Mr. Clemens has given me the manuscript of the whole story again—to read and love again and again. He’s going to make that book with just flavoring enough to suit the palate of the ordinary family, and when I said the ordinary family ought to have seasoning, he said they’d got to have it to make things really go. He’s got some kittens in the manuscript that I was afraid he’d allow to be edited out [MTP TS 72-73].
Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Jean & Teresa left this morning at seven o’clock for Norfolk, going by way of Hartford. / Wrote the British Pharmacy in Florence for the address to the Sir Thomas Wardle / Whiskey” [MTP TS 22].
Samuel J. Elder of Elder & Whitman Attorneys wrote to Sam about extension of copyright matters. “Your favor of the 29 instant came duly to hand. / I am very hopeful that before long , certainly before the ‘fatal forty-second year’ of your copyright, that the copyright term will be much increased.” He then quoted from a couple of letters from Edward Everett Hale, who had been fighting for extensions of his copyrights [MTP]. Note: Elder meant June 29, not “29 inst.” Sam’s of June 29 to Elder is not extant.
Charles J. Langdon wrote to Sam, with Jervis Langdon II adding a handwritten note. Charles enclosed a check for $120 for payment of two coupons each from the Park Co. Montana bonds and the Minneapolis General Electric Co. Jervis added: “The letter for Clara sent today in your care contains a similar check for coupons from bonds of hers…” [MTP].
John Larkin, attorney, wrote to Sam with the news that Gillis & Geoghegan contractors would “commence work immediately” on 21 Fifth Ave “and finish by August 1st”. He had not heard from Katy Leary but assumed they’d already begun work [MTP].
John G. North, attorney, wrote from Riverside, Calif. to Sam. He noticed Sam’s letter to J.M. Fulton about not being able to visit Reno for July 4, and that Sam had mentioned “unforgotten and unforgettable antiques” which included North’s father, John W. North, “whom you first knew as United States Surveyor General, and afterward as Judge of the Territorial Court.” North noted that his father retained a “most agreeable” memory of Clemens, up until his death in 1890 [MTP]. John W. North (1815-1890), appointed Surveyor General of Nevada Territory by Lincoln in June 1861. From 1862 to 1864 was an assoc. justice of the territorial supreme court [MTL 1: 189n12].
Joe Twichell wrote to Sam. He related an account of a woman with a huge stomach tumor that the surgeons first had to drain, then related that to Sam’s letters: “All right, Mark; go ahead. I give you free leave to syphon out to me all such recreations whenever they accumulate to the pitch of discomfort,” and Joe thought it better that he caught them in “his pail” than in the NAR or at Rogers or Howells. Joe was, however, quite of Sam’s mind in opinion about Grover Cleveland. “As to Theodore – he has yet three years left in which to get a smile on your face, and I guess he will do it.” He had seen Clara last week and she looked and felt well. He declined to stay the night but said he would return sometime [MTP].