November 20 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Sam replied to J.H. Todd of San Francisco, who wrote on Nov. 6. Sam’s letter designated as “not sent”: Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good & exhibits considerable character, & there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter & the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, & scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter & your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; & always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded & passed, & I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, & enter swiftly into the damnation which you & all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned & do so richly deserve. / Adieu, adieu, adieu! / Mark Twain [MTP]. Note: see Sam’s Boston speech of Nov. 4, and also Todd’s letter of Nov. 6.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Jean, 9:30 — 3 times” [MTP TS 110; Hill 116]. Isabel Lyon’s Journal # 2: “Phonograph Record. 2” [MTP TS 34].

Ralph W. Ashcroft wrote two letters to Sam, more about the Plasmon and Spiral Pin goings on [MTP].

Walter Barton wrote from Chattanooga, Tenn. to wish Sam a happy birthday—and oh, yes, to ask for an autograph [MTP].

S.H. Friedlander wrote from Portland, Ore. to ask if Sam would consider delivering “ten or twenty lectures on the Coast” [MTP].

Wilhelm Lang for the English Club (Nuremberg) wrote birthday wishes to Sam [MTP].