December 17 Monday – Sam gave his infamous dinner speech at John Greenleaf Whittier’s birthday dinner, Hotel Brunswick, Boston, Mass. [Fatout, MT Speaking 110-4]. The speech was a rambling burlesque about three tramps in the mining country foothills of the Sierras pretending to be Holmes, Emerson and Longfellow. The sketch fell flat and cold on the august assembly. But it was Sam who experienced the greatest pain and mortification for the speech. Howells, writing to Charles Eliot Norton on Dec. 19, referred to the speech as “that hideous mistake of poor Clemens.”
“As you have more than once expressed a kindness for him, you will like to know that before he had fairly touched his point, he felt the awfulness of what he was doing, but was fatally helpless to stop….The worst of it was, I couldn’t see any retrieval for him” [MTHL 2: 214].
Stephen A. Hubbard wrote from the Hartford Courant to Sam with the costs of his telephone project—to install a phone at their offices, and houses of Hubbard, Joseph R. Hawley, Charles E. Perkins and Clemens at a cost of $225 with rental of the phone instrument at $10 per person per year [MTP]. Note: news of the connection to the Clemens residence led to rumors that Sam was now a Courant editor.