October 24 Thursday – In the morning in Bendigo, the Clemens party toured the area of Lone Tree Hill with local newspaper publisher John Gregory Edwards and his wife in a Victoria carriage. In the afternoon Sam took part in a ceremony with the Mayor and city fathers, and received a keepsake booklet by Frank Fearn, a punster, poet, and artist who was “possessed of considerable literary ability.” Shillingsburg conjectures that Fearn was “Quite possibly…“Mr. Blank” in FE, ch. XXV (See Shillingsburg’s other MTJ article, “The Influential Mr. Blank, of Bendigo,” (Fall, 1993) p.28-30.)

Sam gave his “At Home With Mark Twain” at reduced prices in the Royal Princess Theatre. Reviews published Oct. 24-5: Advertiser, Independent [Shillingsburg, “Down Under” 18].

Sam’s notebook in Bendigo:

Oct. 24, Bendigo. It is a fatal thing to let an idiot go through a country first & set its customs. Originally an idiot went through here & decided that in country hotels there shd be no slop jars, & that the clothes should be placed so high as to make a step-ladder necessary.

Just as in America some idiot decided that the mirrors should be so low as to require every middle-sized man to stoop.

Here find the man who was the M T Club in Ireland [NB 34 TS 21]. Note: Charles Casey; see May 15, 1876 in Vol. I.

Sam’s humorous 1887 letter, “A Petition to the Queen of England” ran in the Ballarat Courier, p.4.