June 15 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Franklin Whitmore in Branford, Conn.

Your letter is come, & we thank you heartily for that alluring invitation, but we are leaving to-day for New York; & we leave New York tomorrow morning at 9.15, in a special sleeping-car, which I hired & have caused to be attached to the train because Mrs. Clemens needs to lie down a good deal, & the children need to spread around for comfort’s sake on so long a trip. We reach Elmira at half past 6 p.m. [MTLE 5: 127]. Note: Sam first used such “hotel cars” in 1876.

Sam also wrote from Hartford to Howells after receiving his letter of June 12, which conveyed the judgment that Sylvester Baxter’s article on Sam was “a most blameless and pretty account…with appreciation which he got out of my review [of Tramp]” [MTHL 2: 316].

“The family are assembling at the front door for immediate flight to Elmira. Your letter just received. Well, I’m mighty glad the grave Baxter didn’t ‘give me away.’ I breathe freer, now” [MTLE 5: 126].

Sam added that Patrick McAleer on his staff would send Howells “four little roots” to plant against a wall. He also professed that James A. Garfield (1831-1881) “suits me thoroughly & exactly” and preferred him to “Grant(’s friends)” [126]. The family left Hartford for Elmira, by way of New York to spend the summer.

In the evening in New York, Sam and Livy went to Madison Square Theater, where they saw James Morrison Steele Mackaye’s play Hazel Kirke. Sam admired Miss Georgia Cayvan’s (1858-1906) acting. Sam noted that the play had succeeded elsewhere [MTLE 5: 129]. Note: Sam did write two days after about seeing “one act at Madison Square [Theatre]” and did discuss the chances of William Gillette’s play, The Professor, but it was not the play he and Livy saw on this night [N.Y. Times, June 15, 1880 “Amusements This Evening,” p.4]. Gillette’s play opened on June 1, 1881. The actress Sam misspelled as “Miss Cavan” was Georgia Cayvan. In his Nov. 20, 1906 A.D. Sam recalled knowing Cayvan in the 1870s—see Oct. 14, 1876 entry.

Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk to Sam:

I send some more truck. It is an attempt at improving by re-writing the bosh you have in hand, which please burn. / Give our love to the “sex” as I see she is called in the Atlantic—also to the children. I hope Livy is much better. Do you still suffer with the sciatica? / Judge McCrary’s wife says you had better not come within her jurisdiction, as she thinks you deserve prosecution and imprisonment for life in the penitentiary. She has nearly killed herself and children with laughing over A Tramp Abroad [MTP].