October 25 Saturday – From Sam’s notebook:

Oct. 25. To be attended to tomorrow:

Furnace doesn’t heat enough.

Sell cow if she is going dry.

We not to keep 3 cows.

D. is a failure; can’t raise turnips & roses.

Fix damp place in library shelves.

See Barnard of the Committee [Note: Henry Barnard was a member of the committee to choose a sculptor for the Nathan Hale statue in the state capitol building in Hartford. See MTNJ 2:75n29]

Ask C [Cable] to send me a full ticket [a complete list of his readings].

Hair cut.

Patrick, milk & alarm.

Das Bank Theilen verkaufen [Sell the bank shares].

Hotel in New Haven. [No doubt a reminder to ask Pond which hotel they might meet in].

George W. Cable wrote to Clemens:

Dear Friend: / Pond and I have talked and thought much over the programme. Enclosed please find the embodiment of our conclusions. We both think that more alternation than this would weaken and break the effect. The time here comprised is the same as originally decided on — 2 hours. My memoranda make it so on the margin. The first and second numbers suffice to give the audience a sense that both stars are “present or accounted for” and the 3d and 4th give each a fair swing at their attention & interest without interruption.

      One item in the programme shows a suggestion which I beg to offer. It is a substitute, almost literally from your test, for the phrase “Can’t learn a nigger to argue.” When we consider that the programme is advertised & becomes cold-blooded newspaper reading I think we should avoid any risk of appearing—even to the most thin-skinned and supersensitive and hypercritical patrons and misses—the faintest bit gross. In the text, whether on the printed page or in the readers utterances the phrase is absolutely without a hint of grossness; but alone on a published programme, it invites discreditable conjectures of what the context may be, from that portion of our public who cannot live without aromatic vinegar. I hope you’ll pardon the liberty I take, and restore the original phrase if you think I’m entirely mistaken.

      Wouldn’t you say “carriages at ten”—People like to know; especially when the carriages are sleighs.

      I am sending duplicate program to Pond. Please let him have your verdict as soon as convenient. I shall be in N. York with him Monday. “King Sollermun” is enough by itself to immortalize its author. I read it privately to Waring, his wife and her sister, after midnight of Thursday and I thought they would laugh themselves sick. … [MTP].