February 23 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Joan of Arc” [MTP TS 31].

George J. Helmer, the family’s NY osteopath, wrote to ask Sam for his continued support “just by speaking the word” for the bill on Osteopathy in Albany. On this day Sam replied on Helmer’s letter: “gave 2 or 3 days of time without object[.] Did for the cause once what wouldn’t have done for any other cause for 10000—Didn’t do any good & doesn’t care to repeat that experience” [MTP].

Arthur E. Bullard for Friends of Russian Freedom wrote to Sam, enclosing tickets for the March 4 Carnegie Hall program [MTP].

Harriet E. Whitmore wrote to Sam, enclosing her letter to Dr. Phelps of Yale, who spoke on Keats at the recent Saturday Morning Club. She refers to a letter from Sam she gave to Phelps about the library’s rejection of Eve’s Diary [MTP]. Note: Lyon: “She has carried out my intentions I am very much oblighed to her”

Lizzie E. Wooster wrote on Wooster & Co. School Book Publishers letterhead, Chicago. She asked for photo she might include in a series of school readers [MTP].

The New York Times, p. 14, “Ernest H. Crosby Memorial” announced a memorial meeting of the Social Reform Club in the Cooper Union on Mar. 7 in the evening, and listed Mark Twain and William Dean Howells among several others in charge of the meeting [MTP].

The Times also interviewed Twain on the occasion of Longfellow’s centenary birthday. The article ran the next day, Feb. 24, “Reminiscences of Longfellow and Others” [Fatout MT Speaking 543]. Note: Sam’s acquaintance with Longfellow was slim, but he vividly remembered the fiasco of his burlesque at the 1877 Whittier dinner.