December 24 Tuesday – William Henry Bishop, American Consul in Palermo, Italy wrote a four-page typed letter to “My dear Mr. Autobiographer”:
It is known that when one gets in front of most any kind of an Auto he is apt to be hurt, so I am not much surprised, after the impact of your current Autobiography (page 487 of the December number of the North American Review), to find myself a corpse.
I too remember that famous dinner of the Atlantic Monthly and the presence of the Olympian gods of the region. But what happened was different from the way you represent it. I have no intention at all of trying to amend your good story, and this is one of those things that is “not necessary for publication”; furthermore I should be almost as well pleased to be yoked with you in an alleged calamity as with most other people in their abounding prosperity. I am merely yielding to the impulse to give a little “back talk”, after the lapse of so many years and across the rolling ocean [MTP]. Notes: the dinner referred to by Bishop who also spoke at that event, was the infamous Whittier Birthday dinner in Boston, where Clemens’ story about the three vagabonds named Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes, fell flat. Bishop also disclosed that the next time he spoke before Clemens was in Milan “about 1890” when he spoke in French before the International Copyright Congress. Lyon wrote on the last page of the letter for Sam: “He’s a consul—Jesus! Yes tell him he has forgotten all about the dinner. I was there & I am the only reliable historian, but he’s right about the copyright meeting. I didn’t know that I had said anything at that meeting.”
Samuel E. Moffett wrote one sentence to wish Sam “Christmas greetings” [MTP].
Alexander C. Humphreys for the Lotos Club wrote from Hoboken, NJ to invite Sam to be the guest of the Club for the last dinner in the old house on Jan. 11 [MTP].
December 24 after – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Alexander C. Humphreys and the Lotos Club. “I was not intending to go out again for a year to come, but this invitation unsettles me. I would like to talk with you or with Lawrence about it, if either of you can do me the kindness to call here within a few days. If so, please telephone me, day & hour so that I can be sure & be at home” [MTP].