January 16 Saturday – Sam’s guestbook:  

Name Address Date Remarks

Edward Quintard New York Jan 16 1909

Lumbring Kant [?] New York Jan 16 1909

Frank Lascelles  Oxford – Keblelon   “   16    “ [see notes below]

John Elton Wayland  New York     17-18 Jan 16, 1909

Isabel S. Wayland  “        “   “     “     “

Note: all the guests for this date signed in themselves. In the remarks column for the entry of Frank Lascelles on Jan. 16, Sam wrote:  “Mr Lascelles designed and carried out his splendid historical pageants in Oxford & other English cities in 1907, also the historical pageants in Canada last year, and is now devising the London pageant of 1910, in which 15,000 citizens in costume will take part.” Sam inscribed a leather bound set of Adam’s Diary and Eve’s Diary to Lascelles with this date [eBay # 290459140946, July 30, 2010].  

Caesar A. Roberts, Attorney wrote from Denver, Colo. to Sam.

Dear Mr Clemens:– / I have been down to Carson City, Nevada. The memories of you there are as pleasant and refreshing as the pungent, tonic fragrance from the sage as it comes into the little city on the winds of the morning, after a long night of rain.

I met Sam Davis, the man who wrote that most enjoyable of sketches, The First Piano in Camp, and he is the most winsome and delightful romancer in all the country round about, since you departed.

I presume you remember the cub reporter who was with you, I think, on the Virginia City Enterprise, and was your “pard” when you were millionaires for the ten days required to do the assessment to hold the cross vein. He is Hon Adair Wilson and was one of the ablest judges that ever sat on the Supreme Bench in Colorado.

I also looked upon slide mountain, on a basis of which you wrote that most delightful chapter in Roughing It, the action of trespass vi et terrae, where the overhanging tenant slid down upon his neighbor next below, not only with force but with all the sticks and stones that belonged to his preemption. I met Mr Coutts who remembers the trial well—for you know the lawyers held court in the evenings and gave full play to their fancy and their wit, no less than learning, in that famous action.

I went to Sandy Bowers house, where the door knobs used to be of silver, from the Comstock, for silver, in those days, served to unlock all doors.

Hank Monk, in 1883, for the last time, threw the reins to the hostler, sheathed his whip, and rests in the cemetery at Carson. I visited the grave of your brother Orrin’s [sic Orion’s] little child who died, I think, while you were there.

I read the story and laughed at it as a boy; appreciated it as a man, when I too became a part of the same scenes. The visit was like reading a story and then coming into the reality [MTP].

Note: the paragraph about Sam P. Davis is scribbled through with pencil. Davis was not one of Clemens’ favorites. Mr. Coutts is not further identified.