August 12 Friday – Sam wrote from San Francisco to his mother. Sam had joined the San Francisco Olympic Club and praised the blessings of exercise, saying it has added twenty years to his life. Sam commented about his article, “What a Sky-Rocket Did,” printed in the Call on this date. The article is another hoax, this time about a rocket crashing through a tenement roof, at the expense of a former member of the city’s board of supervisors, William Crawley Hinckley [MTL 1: 305-6].
Branch writes that Lewis P. Ward (“Little Ward”; d.1905) was “probably…responsible for Clemens” joining the Olympic Club. “Ward was a compositor for the Alta California and a “well known gymnast” [C of the Call 223]. In his June 12, 1906 A.D. Clemens dictated that Ward was a compositor for the San Francisco Morning Call:
…and he used to go with little Steve Gillis and me to the beer saloons in Montgomery street when work was over, at two o’clock in the morning, and where I used to sit around till dawn and have a restful, pleasant time, while little Ward and Steve—weighing ninety-five pounds each—good-naturedly picked quarrels with any strangers over their size who seemed to need entertainment, and they always thrashed those strangers with their fists. I never knew them to suffer a defeat. [AMT 2:113].
Four other local articles were also in the Call and attributed to Sam: “Sanitary Fund,” “War of the Fruit Dealers,” “School Children’s Rehearsal,” and “Growing” [Branch, C of Call 294].