January 11 Saturday – Sam read selections from CY at the USMA, West Point, New York. Philip Leon writes:

“While West Point and the cadets are by no means the central metaphor for the novel, he clearly intended for West Point to play an important role in representing an egalitarian institution in which merit counts above heredity” [81].

Not all reviews of CY were glowing: An unsigned article, “Didactic Humorists” ran in Speaker p.49-50 and included a review of CY:

Mr. Clemens is not only dull when he is offensive; he is perhaps even more dull when he is didactic….We hope — we may even believe — that we have seen the artist [Beard] at his worst ; we certainly have not seen the author at his best [Tenney 17].

Charles Ethan Davis telegraphed Sam: “I mean February as some of pump work must be done before machine goes up” [MTP].