April 29 Wednesday– Sam wrote a sketch unpublished until 2009: “Dr. Van Dyke as a Man and as a Fisherman”  [Who Is Mark Twain? xxvi, 87-94]. Note: title assigned by the MTP. Undoubtedly the sketch owes itself to an Atlantic article in the May 1908 issue by Henry Bradford Washburn, “Shall We Hunt and Fish? The Confessions of a Sentimentalist,” where Washburn opens with a quotation from Van Dyke’s “Some Remarks on Gulls, with a Foot-note on a Fish,” Scribner’s Magazine Aug. 1907. In his A.D. for this day Sam wrote (not dictated): “Last night I read in the Atlantic a passage from one of Rev. Dr. Van Dyke’s books….I like Van Dyke, and I greatly admire his literary style—notwithstanding the drawback that a good deal of his literary product is of a religious sort” [Gribben 722: DV 251 MTP]. Note: Van Dyke would be “an officiating clergyman” at Sam’s funeral at the Brick Presbyterian.  

Isabel Lyon’s journal:  “The King can’t dictate these days—he is waiting to be settled in the Redding house” [MTP: IVL TS 50].

Kendall Banning wrote to Lyon (though catalogued to Lyon & Clemens) about making another cast of Clemens’ hand. “The cast taken this afternoon has turned out satisfactorily so far as we know, but we would like to show the hand in different position…. I am writing to Mr. Henry H. Rogers to-day with a request that he also pose for us. It might be possible to arrange to take casts of both Mr. Clemens and Mr. Rogers’ hands at the same time—a plan which was suggested by Mr. Clemens himself” [MTP]. Note: IVL: “It was a poor cast they made—not showing the wrist or palm.” Also,  a clipping is in the file, paper not specified, “H.H. ROGERS SAID TO BE IN VERY POOR HEALTH.”

Howells & Stokes wrote a short note advising that they were ordering two exterior Venetian blinds to fit the two openings at the end of the loggia, for $128.50 [MTP].