November 25 Tuesday – In the evening, Sam and Cable gave a second reading in Congregational Church, Washington, D.C. The Washington Post printed a very positive review of the previous night, and announced that President Grant would attend the reading this night.

“Mark Twain,” for it does not seem natural to call him Mr. Clemens, first recited from the advance sheets of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” This classic was an account of King Sollymun, his wives, wealth and wisdom. It was down in the Mississippi Valley. Huck Finn, a white boy who was maltreated by the old man, ran away with Nigger Jim from the plantation and camped out in the woods. Their conversation was about kings. Jim wasn’t familiar with kings. The only kings he knew anything about were the four kings in a pack of cards. Then Huck told what he knew about kings in general and “Sollymun” in particular. To his youthful mind they were persons who got $1000 per month, went to war occasionally, but “as a general thing they hung around a harem.” Jim was disposed to question “Sollymun’s” wisdom in cutting the disputed child in two. In vain Huck told him he did not understand the case. “It was all on ‘count of his raising,” said Jim. “He had about five million children. Take a man with two or three. Is he gwine to be wasteful of children like dat?” [Railton]

Note: Nowhere in Huck Finn does Sam refer to Jim as “Nigger Jim.” When did this label start? Ernest Hemingway is often blamed for this, but the above review shows, even before Huck Finn was published in the U.S., that some referred to Jim as “Nigger Jim.”

After this performance, Cable discovered three visitors in his dressing room waiting to congratulate him—President Chester A. Arthur, a daughter of Frederick T. Frelinghuysen (Arthur’s Secretary of State) and another unidentified lady. After a time Frederick Douglass came in. Cable was ecstatic about the significance of a meeting between a “runaway slave” and the President; Cable wrote of the meeting to his wife Lucy [Cardwell 22]. (See Nov. 26 entry.)

The Washington Post ran an article on “The rambling narrative style of Twain, Riley, and Artemus Ward” being the pose of “innocence victimized by the world, flesh, and the devil” [Tenney 13].

Andrew Chatto wrote to thank Clemens for his letter of Nov. 5; he fixed Dec. 10 for the publication date of HF in England and had written that to Webster; he advised following the same plan of Canadian copyright used for LM; Moncure Conway had asked for an early copy of HF which would be sent [MTP].

Charles B. Norton for Am. Exhibition in London wrote to ask Clemens if they might add his name to a list of “representative Americans” used for the programme in London in 1886 [MTP].