March 1 Wednesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Tonight Mr. Clemens talked about Mr. Howells. He doesn’t know why he is so loyal to Howells (literarily) and he told me how only recently Mr. Howells has been free from financial worry. He has managed in the long years to tuck away $60,000 in good investments, but that’s all. Then he talked about Bayard Taylor’s wonderful memory. It was brought up by the sense of the words “remember” and “recollect”. Mr. Clemens said that once many years ago he and Bayard Taylor were walking the deck of a steamer when Taylor said he had made a point of each day making a test of his memory. That many years before that time as a boy, he had taken a prize for reciting accurately a list of words which he had been allowed to read only once or twice. They were disconnected words, nothing in them to carry meaning from one to the other. Then Mr. Taylor said “let me walk the deck alone for 10 to 15 minutes and I’ll remember them”—and he did it. “That is recollecting,” Mr. Clemens said and he dropped his napkin and rose with his lovely strong sway from the dinner table to go into the living room and talk to Bambino.

Tonight as I was playing the Andante of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony a reporter from the Journal came to say that Maxim Gorky had said that he’d heard that Mark Twain had signed a petition for his release. I carried the message to Mr. Clemens and his answer was “That he’d been too ill for weeks to sign petitions, if there had been petitions to sign. Although if one had come for Gorky’s release he’d have signed it if he’d had to get out of his coffin to do it.” The reporter scratched down the words on a piece of yellow paper and he was glad in his heart and with his tongue to have so strong a message [MTP: TS 42].

Isabel Lyon’s journal #2: English Butler came today, George Buckridge.

Today Jean left for Dublin to stay overnight with Mrs Abbott Thayer, and look at houses for next summer. Katie is with her.

Mr. Duneka came to talk with Mr. Clemens about Remington Type-writer advertising [MTP TS 6]. Note: the advertising found its way into the Mar. 18 issue of Harper’s Weekly, p. 378 and 391.