December 5 Monday – Sam’s twelfth and last presentation to the Monday Evening Club was the reading of a paper titled “Consistency.” [Monday Evening Club].

In Hartford Sam wrote to Andrew Chatto about the tax that the Inland Revenue Office assessed. Evidently there had been postage due on the receipt for the tax.

Look here, I don’t mind paying the tax, but don’t you let the Inland Revenue Office send me any more receipts for it, for the postage is something perfectly demoralizing. If they feel obliged to print a receipt on a horse-blanket, why don’t they hire a ship & send it over at their own expense?

Sam also felt it was fortunate that they “caught” him “out with an old book instead of a new one? The tax on a new book would bankrupt a body”[MTP]. Note: this tax led to Sam’s article, “A Petition to the Queen of England,” in the Dec. Harper’s.

Sam also wrote to William Smith, English author.

I’ve read it through with comfort & pleasure, and I want to thank you for it. [¶]. I can’t come to England till several months after I get my type-setter done [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Ellen Conway (Mrs. Moncure Conway), declining an invitation. His brief message wasn’t meant to be,

…brusque or abrupt…[but he was] just about to take a train — or, as Mrs. Clemens says in her sharp message, I’m about to lose one [MTP].

Note: Sam was no doubt going to New York again — another short trip, for he was back in Hartford on Dec. 7.

Orion Clemens wrote his brother, suggesting subjects he might offer in an interview with Ranson of the St. Louis Republican. These are worth space here:

If I give him points I thought of mentioning Grandpa and Grandma Casey; some younger and older characteristics of ma (fondness for or tenderness for animals, &c); pa’s studying law under Cyrus Walker; their marriage and removal to Tennessee; pa’s treatment of the old strange preacher about the cow; his facing down the old bully, Frogg; his settling a dispute before him as justice of the peace with a mallet; your philosophical dissatisfaction with your lack of a tail; your sleep-walking and entrance into Mrs. Ament’s room; your year’s schooling; your quitting at 11; your mark in my office; your first writing for the paper (Jim Wolf, the washpan and the broom); your going to Philadelphia at 17 …your swimming in the river and back; ma’s complaint that you broke up her scoldings by making her laugh; Pa’s death; his sharp pen writing for the paper; her present age and vigor; fondness for theatre. / How’s that? [MTP].

Charles Webster wrote asking Sam the market value of the book The Last Days of General Grant by J. H. Douglas M.D. — a manuscript they’d just been handed. [MTP].