November 27 Thursday – Livy’s 39th birthday.

Sam and George W. Cable left the Nast home in Morristown, New Jersey on Thanksgiving morning [Paine, Nast 512]. Once again, Sam was away from home on a family member’s birthday. Willis describes Livy’s Hartford life at the time:

“Occupied with the house, children, paying the bills, taking care of her husband’s correspondence, she wrote him, ‘I love you but I can only send you this line today there are so many things waiting to be done.’ German lessons continued as part of the daily routine of the Clemens household. Susie was memorizing and reciting Tennyson, as Clara was doing with Aesop’s fables. With Livy’s further encouragement, Clara began violin lessons in addition to the piano” [159].

The New York World ran an article about the defacement of a Huck Finn illustration, which created an obscenity and delayed production. The unsigned article was titled, “Mark Twain in a Dilema [sic]—a Victim of a Joke He Thinks the Most Unkindest Cut of All” [Tenney 13]. Note: Several other papers ran articles about this also, including the New York Tribune and the New York Herald on Nov. 29.

The Philadelphia Press, p. 3, ran “Mark Twain and the President / The Humorist Reads before That Official and Thinks That He Impressed Him” [Scharnhorst, Interviews 52-3].