July 20 Thursday – A piece ran in the Elmira Daily Gazette that was reprinted on p. 2 of the New York Times for July 23:

MARK TWAIN AS STRONG AS MR. TILDEN

A large number of our exchanges are crediting Samuel L. Clemens with a struggle with malarial fever. He is depicted by them as lying in his Summer home near Elmira in various stages of dissolution. Such, however, is not the case. He is in good health and is working hard. Any newspaper correspondent who doubts this statement can satisfy himself regarding Mr. Clemens’s condition by climbing up Quarry Farm hill any morning at 5:30 o’clock and knocking at the door of the well-known Mark Twain study-arbor. He will find the author within and at his desk. If he chance to be something of an invalid Mr. Clemens will take him out and show him the woods wherein, last year, by chopping wood, he cured himself of 13 different and distinct diseases.

 Sam wrote from Elmira to Twichell, and the letter found its way to the July 24 issue of the Hartford Courant as well as the July 26 New York Times, on page 3.

E.R. Clarke wrote a postcard from South Stockton, NY to thank Sam for his advice about bearing all the expense of publishing his work [MTP].

Louis Chable sent Clemens a “long German word” for his collection, in exchange for an autograph “written by you and not by your secretary”:

“Vierwaldstätterseealongschruaubendampferactienconcurrenzgesellschaftsbüreau ah!!” [MTP]. Note: translates as “Office of the Vierwaldstättersee propeller-steamer stock company ah!!”

Charles Webster wrote, mainly about the Howard brothers selling down stock in the watch company and Webster advising Jane to sell at par. He also sent Bliss’s check to Sam together with his statement and a long letter July 5th; sent the scrap books this day that Sam wanted. At the top of the letter he pasted a squib from the July 18 NY Sun: “Sunbeams. / A bogus Mark Twain has been lecturing in Ireland” [MTP].