May 9 Saturday – The Clemenses went sightseeing in Durban [Philippon 14].

The Chicago Tribune, p.10 ran a review of JA:

Books of the Day

Mark Twain in Sober Mood

Humorous writing, like the o’er-cheerful cup, has its penalties. The jocular scribbler who saw the printer’s devil doubled up in a fatal fit and vowed never again to be as funny as he could will not have to make puns alone upon the River Styx. Here is the master humorist of our generation compelled to withhold his name from a fine piece of literary work as it runs its serial length through Harper’s simply because the name would mislead the public into regarding the whole as a huge joke. …

Though there is but little humor in this bulky volume, there are abundant incentives to interest. Rollicking fun is replaced by an intense human sentiment. The titillation of wit gives place to the esthetic joy aroused by genuine art. The heroine, as the author depicts her, standing angel-white against the black background of a century that was “the brutalist, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the dark ages,” is a figure that may well appeal to the more enlightened church which today stands ready to canonize her whom once it so foully slew [Budd, Contemporary Reviews 380].