May 31 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Annie E. Trumbull about the previous evening’s event:
It certainly was the perfectest evening I have seen in many a day. You struck twelve in your speech over the back of the chair. I heard Mrs. Clemens say to Susy last night, “I never see Annie Trumbull but she makes me wish I had brains too” [MTP].
The N.Y. World ran an interview, “Mark Twain on Humor,” by Raymond Blathwait (1855-1936), p.6.
It was on one of the most charming days of this month that I passed through the gates of Mr. Samuel L. Clemens’s garden, just off Farmington avenue, in Hartford, and walked up a broad carriage drive to his pretty veranda-circled house. Introduced to the presence of the genial and gifted humorist, I found him knocking about the balls upon an old-fashioned billiard table. As I entered, he at once stepped forward and gave me his hand and a very hearty welcome.
“And how is my dear old friend Charles Warren Stoddard, who has written to me about you? How does he like his curiously secluded life among the priests of the Catholic College at Washington?” he asked in his slow peculiar drawl. “Come and sit down and have a cigar. I myself smoke all the time.”
I sat down in a comfortable armchair, lit the cigar he gave me, and it was a very good one, for, as he said, “I always buy my cigars in America, a special brand. I want to take some to Europe with me, for I never can buy a cigar fit to smoke in England, nor, indeed, anywhere in Europe, and there I am going to live for the next two or three years to educate my little girls.
“Yes, it is a great break up, but I do not see how I can avoid it. However, I am reconciled to it now. You see we are in great confusion, as we are more than half packed up. You have just come to catch me, and I am very glad to have a chat with you. You shall lead and direct the conversation. That, you know, is the interviewer’s business. He must bear the lion’s share, or, at all events, his very full half. A good interviewer has in him the makings of a perfect novelist.”
I said: “Very well then, Mr. Twain, I should much like you to give me your opinion as to the comparative merits of American and English humor.”
The great humorist ran his hands through his mass of fast graying hair, eyed me quizzingly, and then slowly drawled: “That is a question I am particularly and specially unqualified to answer. I might go out into the road there,” pointing as he spoke to the pretty, sun-flecked, shadow-stricken pathway, a glimpse of which I gained through the open window, “and with a brickbat I would knock down three or four men in an hour who would know more than I about humor and its merits and its varieties. I have only a limited appreciation of humor. I haven’t nearly as catholic and comprehensive an idea of humor as you have, for instance.” I demurred loudly to this: “Oh, Mr. Twain, and you who wrote the dialogue in Huck Finn between Huck and the runaway Negro about kings and queens.”
“Exactly,” replied Mr. Twain, as he got up out of his seat and began to pace the room, up and down, while he vigorously puffed away at his cigar, which he almost immediately replaced with his pipe [Scharnhorst, Interviews 130-1; see more there].
A.D. Settle for McCollister Bros. Publishers, Gordon, Texas wrote to Sam, calling him “cousin” — he wanted to hear from Sam and also “receive matter” for publication. Sam wrote “Unanswered letters” on the envelope [MTP].