April 14 Friday – At the Great Northern Hotel in Chicago, Sam wrote his Florence neighbor, Janet D. Ross, letting her know he’d asked agriculture Secretary J. Sterling Morton for some watermelon seeds, “and told him I had a key to your garden and that you kept no dog I was afraid of.” Sam enclosed Morton’s favorable response of Apr. 11, which he would have received in N.Y.

Sam also wrote to Charles M. Underhill, that he would send in the morning, a typescript of the revised piece, “Adam’s Diary” to his son, Irving S. Underhill, to be published in Niagara Book. Irving could send the check payable to C.J. Langdon, and Sam would be along on a visit in a few days. Sam addressed the envelope, playing with the Post Office:

For Mr. C.M. Underhill, who is in the coal business in one of those streets there, & is very respectably connected, both by marriage & general descent, & is a tall man & old but without any gray hair & used to be handsome, / BUFFALO, / N.Y.

From / Mark Twain / P.S. A little bald on top of his head [MTP].

See June 3 entry for publishing details of Niagara Book.

Sam also wrote a short note to Charles Calvin Ziegler (1854-1930), poet whose native language was Pennsylvania Dutch:

Thank you for the sermon from the Republic. I shall reform, now, & write no more books like that one [MTP].

Note: the reference to the Republic is obscure. Ziegler graduated magna cum laude in 1884 from Harvard, and in 1891 published a volume of poems with a Leipzig publisher in 1891, Drauss un Deheem.