January 4 Monday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to the Telephone Operators.

To the Young Ladies of the Telephone Office:

I have received your kind & welcome notes, & I thank you for them, & wish you a happy New year, with many & many others to follow.

Your obliged & appreciative friend Mark Twain  [MTP]. Note: Sam sent each operator a box of candy.

Sam also wrote on The Educational Theatre for Children letterhead, to an unidentified man.

Dear Sir:— / Doubtless the work that has been done by the Educational Theatre for children and young people has come to your notice frequently. This work has attracted attention not only in our own city, where it first took root, but in every city of the United States, from Maine to California, and in a number of cities money is being raised to build Educational Theatres. The belief has been expressed by some of our greatest educators, notably Eliot of Harvard and Hall of Clark University, that the Educational Theatre, New York, is the beginning of an educational movement of national importance.

With this in mind, the directors of the Educational Theatre have arranged a course of lectures dealing with the Theory of the work, and enclosing two course tickets for these lectures, they ask you to lend to this movement the support of your presence. / Yours truly … [MTP]. Note: Sam was listed on the letterhead as President, together with officers and board members Rev. Percy Stickney Grant, Robert J. Collier, Otto H. Kahn, Alice Minnie Herts, G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark Univ., and Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard.

Agnes Acker wrote from Danbury, Conn. to thank Sam for sending a box of chocolates. She signed “Operator #7” [MTP]. Note: at top: IVL: “Telephone girls”

Florence Collins wrote from Danbury, also to thank Sam for chocolates [MTP].

John Henniker Heaton wrote from London to thank Sam for his congratulations on Heaton’s success in establishing penny postage between England, Ireland, and the US. He now was fighting for a penny-per-word cable rate. He closed by urging Clemens to commit to his next visit [MTP].

J. Clinton Roraback wrote from Canaan, Conn. to follow up on an invitation to the Jan. 15 Litchfield University Club banquet, and to offer Sam $75 for a half-hour talk [MTP].

C.B. Thompson wrote from Delta, Colo. to ask if Sam was acquainted with Edward T. Thompson, a pilot on the Mississippi, as he reads of one Thompson mentioned in LM [MTP]. Note: IVL: “Mr. Clemens cannot now say whether this is the Thompson he knew or not & knows nothing of the history on the Mr. Thompson he mentions.”