November 9 Saturday – Sam attended the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Sir Sydney Waterlow was the new Lord Mayor. The banquet was held for 800-900 guests [MTLE 5: 221n1]. On each plate was a plan of the hall with the position of each person numbered. A reading of the names of those present was made, as Sam later told during a journalistic breakfast in 1879. The story ran in the Chicago Times and other newspapers, and here is copied from page two, Dec. 25, 1879 West Liberty, Iowa Weekly Enterprise, taken from the Chicago Times:

When this individual read the name of some prominent political character or literary celebrity, it would be greeted with more or less applause. The individual who was reading the names did so in so monotonous a manner that I became somewhat tired, and began looking about for something to engage my attention. I found the gentleman next to me on the right a well-informed personage, and I entered into conversation with him. I had never seen him before, but he was a good talker and I enjoyed it. Suddenly, just as he was giving me his views upon the future religious aspects of Great Britain, our ears were assailed by a deafening storm of applause. Such a clapping of hands I had never heard before. It sent the blood to my head with a rush, and I got terribly excited. I straightened up and commenced clapping my hands with all my might. I moved about excitedly in my chair, and clapped harder and harder.

‘Who is it?’ I asked the gentleman on my right. ‘Whose name did he read?’

“‘Samuel L. Clemens,’ he answered. “I stopped applauding. I didn’t clap any more. It kind of took the life out of me, and I sat there like a mummy, and didn’t even get up and bow. It was one of the more distressing fixes I ever got into, and it will be many a day before I forget it.”—Chicago Times

Note: It even ran again seven years later (Nov. 21, 1879 p.2) in the Hartford Courant as “Twain’s Best Joke,” with a “claim” that it was being published for the first time.

John C. Hotten wrote a short note to Sam: “I had hoped to have received a note from you this morning, in answer to a letter I sent to you yesterday. I must apologise if my shopman misunderstood the messages you left; but anyway I am not sorry at the opportunity you have afforded me of correcting one or two misconceptions” [MTP].