January 30 Thursday – Capt. John W. Crawford, “The Poet Scout” (1847-1917) wrote to Sam, enclosing a poem “To Mark Twain,” and two printed sheets, one picturing Crawford in a Buffalo-Bill-like outfit, and the other “Poems and Songs of the Poet Scout.” He also enclosed two post-card sized copies of a poem “A Sunshine Boomerang,” and the following note:

Say Mark / Let’s meet and shake before the parting—Sam Davis said to me in 1877, while sitting at my bedside when I was laid up with a leg on a strike, “if you ever get near where Mark Twain is, send your card and say ‘by order of Sam Davis’”—and I’ve wanted to do it lots of times, but knowing you were a busy, strenuous worker, I hesitated to break in on you, but just lately I have had a great desire to meet and swap a few with you if only for a moment—I will be at the Hoffman till about the 5th or 6th of February, and I hope you will order me up, and believe me you are enshrined in my old Broncho heart low these many years—and I am your friend in clouds or sunshine  [MTP]. Sam’s reply after Feb. 5 and his return to NY: “Answer/ Dear Captain: / It is sorrow to me that you got away so soon. I arrived the very night that you escaped westward. / The next time you are coming, I beg you to give me a few days’ notice, so that I can be clear of engagements. / Sincerely Yours / Mark Twain”. Note: see also Sept. 19, 1908 from Crawford. 

Sam’s A.D.: “It takes a Cromwell…ten years to raise the standards of English offical and commercial norals to a respect-worthy altitude” [Gribben 129].  

The New York Times, p. 8 reported:

Receiver Wants to See Mark Twain.

Armed with an order signed by Judge Holt of the United States District Court, Charles L. Brookheim is looking for Mark Twain to get from him the books of the Plasmon Company, of which the humorist was President prior to the recent bankruptcy proceedings against it. Mr. Bookheim was appointed receiver of the company. Mark Twain is at present in Bermuda.