December 4 Tuesday – Sam’s letter which argued for changing the under-construction Statue of Liberty into one for Adam ran on page 2 of the New York Times [Budd, “Collected” 1020].

MARK TWAIN AGGRIEVED.

WHY A STATUE OF LIBERTY WHEN WE HAVE ADAM!

Mark Twain was asked to contribute to the album of artists’ sketches and autograph letters, to be raffled for at the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition, and this is his response, which accompanied his contribution: You know my weakness for Adam, and you know how I have struggled to get him a monument and failed. Now, it seems to me, here is my chance.

What do we care for a statue of liberty when we’ve got the thing itself in its wildest sublimity? What you want of a monument is to keep you in mind of something you haven’t got—something you’ve lost. Very well; we haven’t lost liberty; we’ve lost Adam.…what have we done for Adam? Nothing. What has Adam done for us? Everything. He gave us life, he gave us death, he gave us heaven, he gave us hell [MTNJ 3: 13].

Note: The article was in response to a call for letters and sketches by artists and writers to be raffled to raise money to build a pedestal for the statue.

Sam played a character from a Dickens novel scene, “Leo Hunter” at the Union for Home Work, Authors’ Carnival, Hartford. The Hartford Courant, for Dec. 5, 1883, p.2, ran an article titled “The Authors’ Carnival”:

The second event of the evening was the presentation on the large stage of a scene from Charles Dickens’ “Leo Hunter.” It introduced a number of clever ladies and gentlemen who not only acted their parts, but lent to it the dialogue. The principals, Miss Hamersley and Mr. Prentice, were roundly applauded, and when Mark Twain came on the stage as a character in the scene, plaudits rang from one end of the enormous hall to the other. This scene alone was enough to compensate one for the expense of the entire evening’s entertainment.

Charles Webster wrote about business matters: grape shears, an invention of Howells’ father [MTP].