February 18 Wednesday – The official U.S. publication date for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Oxford edition, 1996]. Note: other dates are sometimes given, for example, Budd in MT “Collected” gives Feb. 16 [978]. In the first month the book sold 42,000 copies [Willis 161]. By the year 2000, the book had sold perhaps twenty million copies and approximately 60 foreign editions [162].
Ozias Pond finally left Milwaukee and returned to New York [Cardwell 53].
En route from Ottowa to Montreal, Sam began a letter to Livy, to which he added a P.S. on Feb. 19 in Montreal. Sam stayed at the Windsor Hotel.
“On board the train, Feb. 18/85. / This is a most superb winter morning—snow up to the fence-tops splendid sunshine, no wind, white smoke floating up in lazy columns from the scattered log houses, the distances vague & soft in a haze that is lightly tinted with blue” [MTP].
The Athenænum Club, a literary society of high rank, held a reception for the reading troupe at the Windsor from 4:30 to 6:00. Some 200 leading citizens, mostly ladies, were there to meet Sam and George. A long list of attendees was printed in the Feb. 19 Herald and Daily Commercial Gazette along with a notice for the next evening’s performance [Cardwell 62].
Sam and Cable gave a reading at the Queen’s Hall, Montreal, Canada.
Afterward, Sam gave an impromptu speech at Tuque Bleue Snowshoe Club in Montreal Canada.
“Husky young club members seized Clemens, Cable, and the huge major [Pond] and tossed them repeatedly to the ceiling. Each of the visitors made speeches, Cable sang “Pov’ Piti Momzel Zizi,” club members sang a snowshoe song, and, finally, all joined in “God Save the Queen” [Cardwell 63].
The Brockville (Canada) Evening Recorder, p.1: “Mark Twain’s Wicked Moments.” A reporter wrote down some of Sam’s dinner-table conversation [Scharnhorst, Interviews 86].
February 18 or 19 Thursday – Sam wrote from Montreal to Captain Jim Smith, declining an invititation to some event. “The readers connected with this circus must attend strictly to business—no social life allowed them” [MTP].
Zon gives us a “not as yet cataloged” “reply” from Sam to Henry Perkins Goddard (1842-1916), written “in Montreal:
“MY DEAR CAPTAIN,—We thank you ever so much, but we can’t. The readers connected with this circus must attend strictly to business—no social life allowed them. / Sincerely yours, / S. L. Clemens” [323].