April 24 Monday – Sam wrote to Orion and Mollie Clemens, sending a check for three months.
“Livy is only about customarily well—that is to say, in rather indifferent strength. As I don’t enjoy letter writing there being such an awful lot of it to do, I will try to make up with a photograph” [MTPO].
Sam also wrote to an unidentified person who had sent him and Livy wedding invitations.
“I wish to be cordially remembered to your father & mother, whom I knew a good while before you were born—a fact which reminds me that I am not as young as I am in the habit of imagining myself to be” [MTLE 1: 47].
In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote a short note to Sam, letter to H.O. Houghton from Frank Moore Apr. 21 enclosed. Moore, editor of Record of the Year, a short-lived New York publication by G.W. Carleton & Co., had wished to print one of Sam’s Atlantic articles [MTHL 1: 131].
James T. Fields wrote a brief note: “Dear C. / Wouldn’t I like to, but I cant do it. Lecture engagements here choke up Wedy. & Thursday” [MTPO]. Note: source notes reveal this was reply: “Clemens had sent two invitations (both unrecovered) to Annie and James T. Fields to attend either of the performances of The Loan of a Lover, on Wednesday, 26 April, or Thursday, 27 April. The first probably was a telegram on Monday, 24 April, which Fields answered with a postcard not mailed until 25 April.”
John L. RoBards wrote from Hannibal Mo.
Friend Clemens, / I drop you a brief note to say, that, “Mark twain,” has a heart, as well as a head, & to add that I am just in receipt of yours of the 17th inst inclosing to me a check on the Nat’l Butcher & Drover Bank for One Hundred dollars to be applied touching your Fathers & Brother’s graves. The matter shall receive prompt & kind attention and when consumated I will write you again in detail with statement of expenditure— In the meanwhile accept my hearty good wishes / very Truly Yours— / J. L RoBards [MTPO].
April 24? Monday – Sam wrote to Mrs. Sidney J. Cowen, president of the Union for Home Work, declining to continue acting in the play beyond two performances, even for charity [MTPO].
On or about this day Sam also wrote to Mary B. (Mollie) Shoot (Florence Wood). Only a fragment of the letter survives. This from MTPO notes for the letter:
“Mary B. (Mollie) Shoot (1863?–1954), who had a long career as a character actress under the stage name Florence Wood, ‘made her debut in the Augustine [sic] Daly Stock Company. She came to the troupe with a letter of introduction from Mark Twain, a neighbor and friend of her family in Hannibal, Mo., where she was born’ (‘Mrs. Felix Morris, A Former Actress,’ New York Times, 19 Apr 1954, 23; see also Inds, 347–48).”