September 28 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:  “On Saturday I saw everything to be done in the N.Y. house and not a whit done that Katie had said should be done. So this morning I set out for N.Y. and with Will Wark we worked savagely all day—going from garret to cellar. Santa came in at 6—for Mary has tonsillitis, and Benares came too” [MTP: IVL TS 67].

Sylvester Baxter wrote from Boston to Sam after reading in the paper the account of Clemens’ speech at the Whittier birthday dinner back in 1877.

Dear old Mark: – / I was delighted to read yesterday your account of your experience at the Atlantic Dinner in honor of Whittier’s seventieth birthday. I was there myself as a very young author, having lately returned from studies in Germany. I was, I believe, the “kid” of the company, and had merely contributed to the Atlantic a couple of poems that Howells liked and an article on the theater in Germany which had then, I believe, not appeared.  

      I want to tell you that your speech at the time gave me great delight, and I could not account for the frosty reception that it received. I felt about it then precisely as you feel  now. I believe I laughed immoderately. Howells, a little while afterwards, told me that he really enjoyed it himself, and, for his part, he could not see anything out of the way in it.

      In those days there was, I think, too great a tendency to take authors solemnly, and the eminent ones, I fear were reciprocatingly inclined also to take themselves solemnly, and to accept their roosting places upon the pedestals assigned to them as Exalted Ones. I was talking about those old-fashioned tendencies with Bliss Perry not long ago, and he agreed with me. Authors now-a-days, I think, as a rule,—that is, those who amount to anything,—do not like to be taken solemnly and assigned to pedestals….

      …. It seemed to me queer at the time that Emerson, Longfellow, and Holmes, did not appreciate the fun of it, and appeared to consent to let it pass that they felt themselves objects of blasphemy. Really they ought to have thanked you. … [MTP].

Miss Annie Sullivan wrote from Connellsville, Pa. to Sam enclosing poetry and asking if he would tell her if they were any good [MTP]. Note: IVL: “return poems”

Mrs. R.M. Wallace wrote from NYC to Sam. Hers was a melancholy and melodramatic appeal, having been directed by Ralph W. Ashcroft in NYC that Clemens no longer lived in the City. She was working to finish her late husband’s work, “The Flowers and Plants of Robert Burns,” and would send letters from Andrew Carnegie, William Winter, Dr. Henry Van Dyke “and others” once she got back to West Gloucester [MTP]. Note: the envelope was not mailed, and likely delivered by Ashcroft.

Chandler N. Wayland wrote from Stonington, Conn. to Sam. “I have just read your account of that old time Boston dinner. I only remember now, reading about it in the papers at the time and feeling that you were ‘in for it’! How different it comes out from what it seemed then. / And you were funny.” He closed hoping to see Clemens in Bermuda again this winter [MTP]. Note: IVL: “Oct 20 /08”