December 31 Tuesday – Sam attended the Author’s Club Watch Night event in New York City and told a story. George Cary Eggleston had invited Sam on Dec. 19 and recalled the event:

[The club festivities were patterned after] the old custom of the Methodists who held “Watch Night” meetings, seeing the old year out and the new year in with rejoicing and fervent singing…. Fortunately, Mark Twain was called upon to begin the story telling, and he put formality completely out of countenance at the very outset. Instead of standing as if to address the company, he seized a chair, straddled it, and with his arms folded across its back, proceeded to tell one of the most humorous of all his stories [MTNJ 3: 536n167 quoting Eggleston’s Recollections of a Varied Life (1910)].

John Cockerill for New York World wrote inviting Sam to be on the Committee of Invitations for the Apr. 10, 1890 ball to be held at the Metropolitan Opera House [MTP].

Crown Point Iron Co. sent a printed business statement for the year ending Dec. 31, 1889 [MTP].

Webster & Co. sent Sam ledger page reports for “Books Sent out during September, 1889” totaling 3,908 books; for October totaling 2,824 books; for November 5,729; and for Dec. 21,745, which included 12, 398 for CY [MTP].