May 30 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Julia Jones Beecher (Mrs. Thomas K. Beecher 1826-1905), about her “jabberwocks” (creative arrangements of roots, flowers and other natural items into images of creatures.) Sam agreed to be the auctioneer for the June 5 auction at the Grand Bazar for Union Home Work. [MTLE 5: 116; Eastman 61]. “I have arranged your jabberwocks, and other devils, in procession according to number and rank.”

The Boston Daily Globe ran an article “The Telephone / Mark Twain’s Reflections on the Great Invention. How it Seems to Hear Only One End of a Conversation”—this was a reprint of Sam’s June, 1880 Atlantic Monthly article, “A Telephonic Conversation.”

I consider that a conversation by telephone when you are simply sitting by and not taking any part in that conversation—is one of the solemnest curiosities of this modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the room. I notice that someone can always write best when somebody is talking through a telephone close by.