Submitted by scott on

September – In the Century Magazine for the month, William Dean Howells published what Powers calls “one of the earliest appreciations” of Sam Clemens’ literature. Howells compared Sam’s originality with humor as a form to Shakespeare’s use of poetry as poetical. He explained the difference between “merely facetious” humorists such as Josh Billings or the late Artemus Ward and Sam’s use of humor” [MT A Life 464]. See MMT 134-44 for the entire text.

“… I warn the reader that if he leaves out of the account an indignant sense of right and wrong, a scorn of all affectation and pretense, an ardent hate of meanness and injustice, he will come indefinitely short of knowing Mark Twain.” – W.D. Howells in the Century, September 1882

Sam wrote to Charles Webster, enclosing an advertisement to sell $5,000 of stock in the Independent Watch Co of Fredonia. Sam wanted the ad run once in the Buffalo Courier Express, the CensorAdvertiserUnion newspapers and also on posters in Fredonia [MTP].

September, before 28th – Sam telegraphed Charles Webster from Elmira about a company publishing some of his old jokes and using his name to sell material he did not write [MTBus 198].

Day By Day Acknowledgment

Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.   

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