April 5 Thursday – Sam gave a reading at the British Embassy in Paris in behalf of a school for destitute English and American children, with tickets at $4, an amount that Sam “trembled” from [Mar. 30 to Rogers; Apr. 12 to Orion; NY Times article below]. Note: this has sometimes been reported in error as Apr. 7, perhaps due to a mis-dating in an Apr. 22 article. The New York Times reported on this reading:

Mark Twain Reads in Paris.

PARIS, April 5. — Lord Dufferin, British Ambassador, presided at an entertainment given this evening at the British Embassy for the benefit of British and American schools in Paris. Mark Twain read selections from his writings, and was applauded enthusiastically. Many members of the Anglo-American colony were present. The entertainment was successful both financially and socially.

According to the NY Times Apr. 22, p.21 “Entertaining Paris Gossip,” Sam read “Playing Courier,” and the “Interview.” The report said “He could hardly speak amidst the uproar and continued laughter.”

Joe Twichell finished his Mar. 29 letter to Sam, joyful that his daughter “little Harmony” went to church by her own choice for the first time in “nearly a year and a half.” Joe wrote of being visited by one of the mechanics for the Paige typesetter, Parker, who was moving to Chicago for the operations there, and of Parker’s eloquence and faith in the machine, which Parker saw as a “living object of pride and affection.” Joe said that Sam’s letter from Mentone was “right cheerful reading, for it bore signes of the passing of our eclipse.” Joe hoped that he could go abroad for a time, “somewhere out of reach of the octopus tentacles of Duty,” but it wasn’t yet settled. He added a note about a baby’s funeral service he’d given, and how the father, “scarcely out of his teens…but all his heart was in that little casket…” [MTP].