November 20 Wednesday – Sam wrote two letters to his mother, Jane Clemens and family upon arriving in New York, and finished them this day.
—the Herald folks got me at 6 o’clock, & notwithstanding I had an engagement to dine at the St. Nicholas with some ladies [Mary Fairbanks and Charles Langdon have been identified]. & take them to the theatre, I sat down in one of the editorial rooms & wrote a long article that will make the Quakers get up & howl in the morning.
The Quakers are all howling, to-day, on account of the article in the Herald. They can go to the devil, for all I care [MTL 2: 106].
Sam’s article, “The Cruise of the Quaker City,” dated Nov. 19, was printed on this morning [MTL 2: 104; McKeithan 313-19]. From the Herald article:
A free, hearty laugh was a sound that was not heard oftener than once in seven days about those decks or in those cabins, and when it was heard it met with precious little sympathy…The pilgrims played dominoes when too much Josephus or Robinson’s Holy Land Researches, or book-writing, made recreation necessary—for dominoes is about as mild and sinless a game as any in the world, excepting always the ineffably insipid diversion they call croquet, which is a game where you don’t pocket any balls and don’t carom on any thing of consequence, and when you are done nobody has to pay, and there are no refreshments to saw off, and consequently there isn’t any satisfaction whatever about it—they played dominoes till they were rested, and then they blackguarded each other privately till prayer-time. When they were not seasick they were uncommonly prompt when the dinner gong sounded. Such was our daily life on board the ship—solemnity, decorum, dinner, dominoes, devotions, slander. It was not lively enough for a pleasure trip; but if we had only had a corpse it would have made a noble funeral excursion [Lennon 183-4].
November 19 or 20 Wednesday – Sam may have met Thomas Nast, famous illustrator and cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly, upon his return to New York. Nast had a show opening there on Dec. 4. Or, he may have met Nast after traveling to Washington. Either way, Nast soon proposed a lecture tour Sam speaking and Nast drawing. Ten years later Sam broached the subject with Nast again:
Therefore I now propose to you what you proposed to me in November, 1867—ten years ago, (when I was unknown,) viz.: That you should stand on the platform and make pictures, and I stand by you and blackguard the audience. I should enormously enjoy meandering around (to big towns—don’t want to go to little ones) with you for company [Nov, 12, 1877 to Nast in MTL, 1: 311].
On one of these days, Sam also went to see Charles H. Webb.
Webb told me that the “Jumping Frog” book had been favorably received by the press and that he believed it had sold fairly well, but that he had found it impossible to get a statement of account from the American News Company. … He was willing to accommodate me upon these terms: that I should surrender to him such royalties as might be due me; [because Webb had supposedly incurred manufacturing costs] that I should surrender to him, free of royalty, all bound and unbound copies which might be in the News Company’s hands; also that I should hand him eight hundred dollars cash; also that he should superintend the breaking up of the plates of the book…[AMT 2: 49]. See Explanatory notes 49.31-33 and 50.11-14 p. 487 of source. In the former, John A. Gray and Green Co. listed a total of 4,076 books printed. This was the same NYC company that 17 year old Clemens set type for.