May 10 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to his mother, Jane Lampton Clemens. Sam confided the dilemma of helping Orion and Mollie rent a chicken farm in Keokuk while at the same time giving them:

“…a lot of advice which none but children ought to need, but which THEY richly need & which will make Mollie rip & tear, no doubt.”

Sam’s advice was to live like simple chicken farmers, to eschew fine dress and sell the fine Hartford furniture and not try to be “hifalutin fine folks.” Sam expressed the wish that his mother would be their creditor, not himself [MTL 6: 141].

Sam also wrote to Orion, who must have complained of Sam’s tone when sending the $900 earlier in the month or at the end of April. Sam was upset that the Dubuque swindler had been let go; that The Gilded Age had been used in an unauthorized play in San Francisco; and that his pamphlets (Mark Twain Sketches. No. One) had been delayed. He offered those as reasons for his “venom” to Orion and then wrote:

I hope you & Mollie will thrive where you are going—& I hardly see how you can help it. Forty dollars a month from the houses on that farm is a living, in itself. So I hope the change is going to be a change to prosperity & contentment—for you are aging & it is high time to give over dreaming & buckle down to the simplicities & the realities of life [MTL 6: 143].

Note: After investing $4,000 to have the pamphlets printed, Sam discovered that his contract with Bliss forbade him from publishing anything except through the American Publishing Co. Sam sadly told the printer, Louis Brush, to destroy the 100,000 pamphlets. Brush came up with the idea of selling advertising for the back of the pamphlet and then giving them away, which salvaged Sam’s investment [MTL 6: 144n5].

Sam also wrote William Dean Howells about Orion’s connection to the Tennessee Land and his parallel character in The Gilded Age. Sam enclosed Orion’s reply to his letter with checks totaling $900 [MTL 6: 145]. Note: Sam often expressed disgust with Orion’s incompetence and lack of promise, yet family duty pressed him to keep trying, though his tone with Orion seemed that of an irritated father.

Sam also wrote to Frederick W. Haddon (1839-1906), the editor of the Melbourne, Australia Argus, who was visiting in New York. Haddon had written Sam during his stay in America, complimenting him and suggesting Sam serializing a book in the Argus. Sam declined, although he said he was engaged in a book (probably TS) but “in such a leisurely way” that he didn’t think it would be done within a year [MTL 6: 147].

Sam set aside the unfinished Tom Sawyer manuscript and began writing his own adaptation of The Gilded Age play, which he’d purchased back from Gilbert B. Densmore. Sam wrote three drafts and completed it as five-acts in about 60 days [Powers, MT A Life 352].