January 1 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C. Sam replied to Gertrude Natkin’s Dec. 31 note.

Don’t forget, dear, to make your New-Year good-resolutions. Not that I think you need any reforming, for I don’t; I love you plenty well enough, just as you are. Happy New-Year! I forgot to say it before: this comes of being 17 times as old as you are, & accordingly cripple in my mind & forgetful [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s journal:

Jean, 11; 1:20, 7 p.m., very severe.

“The last time I attended school was at the end of 1846.” Mr. Clemens wrote that this morning. About 60 years ago—a little boy of ten.

Tonight I took a little book down to Mr. Clemens, a little book sent me by Belle Greene, “The Childhood of Christ”, translated from the Latin of an old monkish manuscript found in a monastery in the Saly Kammergut. Translation by Harry Greene. The book came as a dampness to me, but as I began to cut the leaves I found it fragrant with legendary love, and read it to its finishing page with delight. Mr. Clemens read a part of it too, and found it delightful, but he was “afraid it was a lie” [MTP TS 1-2; Gribben 275 in part]. Note: the book was a translation by Henry Copley Greene of the Gospel of the Infant according to St. Peter, from the New Testament Apocryphal Books.

Virginia Frazer Boyle wrote New Year wishes to Sam [MTP].

John M. Leach wrote to Sam from Montreal, thinking his best book was RI, and desiring to “procure one of your productions,” specifically “the story ‘of Joseph and his brethren’ as repeated to his Sunday Scholl class by Scotty Briggs” [MTP].

Mrs. Helen Grandin Lord sent a filled-in engraved invitation by Sorosis 1868, for a luncheon on Jan. 10, 1906 at 1 p.m. at the Waldorf-Astoria [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote & circled at the top “Decline it”.