August 6 Monday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam inscribed the first photo of himself in the series “Progress of a Moral Purpose” to daughter Jean: “To Jean Clemens / with the deep love of her / Father / Aug. ’06. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain” [MTP].

Sam also replied to the July 31 from Dr. Benjamin E. Smith of the Century Co., N.Y.

I am authority for the fact—which is a fact—that the term labrick was in constant use by all grown men except certain of the clergy in the state of Missouri when I was a boy. It had a very definite meaning & occupied in the matter of strength the middle ground between scoundrel & son of a bitch.

Sincerely Yours / SL. Clemens

P.S. But I think you are serious about this. If you are, let me brush aside the ornamental & give you the plain & authentic definition of the word. Labrick is substantially ass, a little enlarged & emphasized; let us say, labrick is a little stronger than ass, & not quite as strong as idiot [MTP].

Clemens’ A.D.   this day included:  Goes back to the failure of Charles L. Webster & Co.— First meeting with H. H. Rogers—His sympathy, and assistance—Mr. Clemens in 3 years pays off 100 cents on the dollar.— Clemens’ income from his books has been as high as $57,000 a year [MTP: Autodict2].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: ABP came out & straightened out the ms. & then we walked to the upper pasture to talk & talk about the King. “I’m so glad he’s just as he is. He ought to be just as he is. The King can do no wrong.” That is our ritual. We measured off the rooms down stairs with a view to proportions for the new Redding house and if I am good, very good, I am to have a strip of land in Redding to build me there a little house. AB will let me use the strip from his own property. Oh, I must be good—monotonously good. Nancy Brush put on one of my night gowns & porpoised down the hill for Mr. Clemens. Last night she did it in the moon light and it was a dear sight [MTP TS 103]. Note: from her Aug. 7 entry for this evening:

Last evening [Aug. 6] we went to a “Joe Smith” play. It was given in the open air & Ethel Barrymore played in it. Joe Smith was a Jack Frost. Mr. Clemens & I sat on an upper balcony, whence we could look down into the lovely garden and see Jack Frost touch the flowers with baneful hand—his power banished however by the Queen of the Garden—Ethel Barrymore. But first came the old woman of the garden, walking about among her posies, & mourning their approaching deaths. How sweet she was, how dodderingly sweet & touching.

The waiting for the carriage afterward was so tiresome & the thing above all others that Mr. Clemens hates so, & this morning he told me that he held himself in—a dozen times he was on the verge of saying his hatred of it all, but he didn’t he didn’t spoil a good & sweet evening by exploding, and how he would hve done it a few years ago! How he used to distress Mrs. Clemens & give her heartaches. Then Susie’s death came & he learned to control himself for a while, but he said it was only for a while, & once again he broke out into his old ways, so heartbreaking to Mrs. Clemens [MTP TS 103-105].