January 21 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote an aphorism to an unidentified person: “Consider the proportions of things: it is better to be a young june-bug than an old bird of Paradise. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / Jan. 21/07” [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: Dr. Herring came, says Bermuda is better in summer than in winter.

Yesterday morning the kind said that in spite of all the builders might say to the contrary “the skyscrapers wouldn’t have any more show in time of an earthquake than a cat without claws would have in Hell”.

It was that remark of his which set me dreaming last night … [her related dream cut here]

Gerry Brush came in this afternoon & stayed on & on with me until 9:45. The King dined with the Robt. Colliers & came home at 10:30 with freesia in his button hole, & smoking a long thick cigar. He dropped into his big brown chair & told how Mr. Dooley was there, & what a pleasant time it was [TS 18-19].

The H.W. Gray Co. sent under separate cover a copy of The New Music Review and a subscription blank [MTP].

Nat Haddow wrote to Clemens from Melbourne, Australia to relate his memories of seeing, with his late mother, Sam’s lecture in Melbourne. “My mother was a very religious woman & without humor.” After the lecture he “said, well Mother what do you think of Mark Twain? My son (she said) I hope you will never take me to such a place again. ‘He just simply stood there telling lies’” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter: “We get all sorts of criticisms & we are very much delighted with this one.”

J.J. Halsey of the New York Press Art Bureau, replied to Isabel Lyon and indirectly to Sam that they couldn’t send a photographer to his house as he’d suggested “because we could not get the results adapted to reproduction purposes, and would much prefer to wait until Mr. Clemens could find it convenient to call at The Marceau Studio” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter: “Cannot go / The effects can be got here perfectly well”