December 17 Monday – In N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam and declined an invitation to lecture from Mrs. Caverly [MTP].

Clemens’ A.D. of this day included: The coincidence of the Kaiser’s and the portier’s appreciation of “Old Times on the Mississippi,” expressed almost in the same moment—The coincidence of Clemens reflecting on the definition of the word civilization, and then picking up the morning paper and finding his very ideas set forth by a writer who attributed the marrow of his remarks to Clemens [MTP Autodict3].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: Oh the dear queer foreign people who write such nice funny English to the King.

Here is one now, a woman from Argentina who wishes “health & good luck to the Mark Twain. Do the favor to write mi on the present tarjet an idea; thanking you for the same, your humble, S. Monica Victoria Gomez.” I find that tarjeta is Spanish for post card—so of course to her tarjet is the English of it [MTP TS 150].

Frank N. Doubleday for Doubleday, Page & Co. wrote to Sam: “Dear M.T. Here is what Andrew Carnegie says of What is Man. I’ll call on you in a day or two.” Evidently he had sent one of the 250 privately printed booklets to Carnegie, who wrote, in part: “Thanks for the volume. It will startle the ordinary man, but I don’t see that it goes much deeper than we were before. ‘The New Knowledge’, Prof. Duncan (Barnes), you should read. All is electric and one substance—of course the Brain is) somehow governs the Universe, the ant and the man included” [MTP].

Nellie C. Magennis wrote from Randolph, Vt. to ask Sam if he rec’d her prior letter and sheet music. It was all she had to earn money from, writing music, to support her 93 year old mother [MTP].