April 8 Monday – Sam and Livy (judging from Sam’s Apr. 15 to Susan L. Crane) went to New York and stayed at the Murray Hill Hotel. In the evening, Sam gave a speech at the “Baseball Dinner,” Delmonico’s in New York, which he titled, “The Grand Tour-1. The Sandwich Islands.” Fatout writes:
A.G. Spalding, president of the Chicago National League Club, financed the first American baseball invasion of the Old World, a globe-circling tour of two teams, the All-Americans and the Chicagos, from October 1888 to April 1889. When they returned to New York, a banquet feted promoter and players for most of a boisterous night. Theodore Roosevelt was there, Charles B. Dillingham, A.C. “Pop” Anson, F.D. Millet, De Wolf Hopper, and several hundred other buoyant gentlemen. “The dinner,” said the New York Herald next day, “was served in nine innings, of course, and the waiters had evidently been trained to make all the champagne bases.” Speakers were seated in positions corresponding to those of a baseball team: Chauncey Depew, pitcher; Judge Henry M. Howland, catcher; and so forth. Mark Twain, shortstop, was introduced as a native of the Sandwich Islands [MT Speaking 244]. (Editorial emphasis.)
Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive, and push, and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century!
The rest of Sam’s speech may be read in Fatout and also in the Boston Daily Globe, Apr. 9, 1889 p.1 “DEPEW’S CURVES”.
Before he left Hartford, Sam wrote to Clarence Winthrop Bowen (1852-1935), one of the founders of the American Historical Association, (formed on Jan. 4, 1889) accepting “with pleasure the kind invitation of the Committee on the Centennial Celebration” [MTP]. Note: The three-day event (Apr. 29 to May 1) celebrating 100 years since George Washington took the oath of office, Apr. 30, 1789 in New York City included naval and military parades, and a banquet at the Metropolitan Opera House on Apr. 30. Sam would view the main parade from the windows of the Webster & Co. offices. On Apr. 28 Sam would write another one-liner to Bowen that he was unable to come.
Orion and Mollie Clemens started a letter to Sam and Livy they finished on Apr. 10. Orion wrote more about the typesetter; and concern for Sam’s health [MTP].