July 2 Tuesday – At Quarry Farm Sam wrote on a series of three stones, a “Contract” with Julia J. Beecher (Mrs. Thomas K. Beecher). Stones 1-3:

If you prove right and I prove wrong 
A million years from now, 
In language plain and frank and strong 
My error I’ll avow 
To your dear mocking face.

 If I prove right, by God his grace, 
Full sorry I shall be, 
For in that solitude no trace 
There’ll be of you and me 
Nor of our vanished race.

 A million years, O patient stone, 
You’ve waited for this message 
Deliver it a million hence! 
(Survivor pays expressage.) 
Mark Twain [MTP].

Note: The text of this poem, with one line missing, was published in the July 31 N.Y. Tribune and the Aug. 3 issue of Critic, p.79. [Tenney, ALR supplement to the Reference Guide (Autumn 1978) 167-8] See a photocopy of the stones on p.198, Jerome & Whisbey. Also, See: Sharlow’s article on Julia Jones Beecher in the MT Encyc. p.65-6; and Mark Woodhouse’s “A Rediscovered Letter and Other Items of Note” [“The Wager Stones”] in Dear Friends (Spring 2006): 6-7. Mark worked in some interesting factoids regarding the stones as per an “R. A. Hall in August of 1895 relating [in a document] the history of the wager stones, a set of three flat stones in the collections of the Mark Twain Archive” [Elmira College], including that:

The stone was picked up by Mrs. Beecher in the Susquehanna river bed near Wyalusing Pa near to the summer cottage of Charles Beecher. The stone is kidney shaped of a slatey formation and a reddish color and singularly was split into three slabs. [Thanks to JoDee Benussi for these sources].

Sam also wrote a short note to James B. Pond reiterating that if Pond would make the engagements, he would fill them. He advised Pond that the Century Co., ten days before, wanted to buy the huge photo of him for its exclusive use [MTP].

Sam also wrote a short note to Clara Spaulding Stanchfield, including the “old original draft” of the poem to Julia J. Beecher [MTP].