• Pilgrims, Vandals and Looking for Respectability

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    A busy time for Sam/Mark Twain: He wanted to turn his travel letters into a book. This required a return to California, and a second crossing of the Peninsula, to convince the Daily Alta California to allow his use of the letters they had published of his Quaker City journey. He, again, lectured in California and Nevada, crossed the Peninsula a third time and returned to New York. Sam wished to be considered respectable, something more than a "Western Humorist". This he gained, along with a marriage into a wealthy family. While working on publishing his new book, he again toured throughout New York and the Mid-West on his American Vandals Abroad tour.
  • 1867

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    Key West – New York – Charles Webb Published The Jumping Frog
    52 hours to St. Louis – Artemus Ward Dead – Lectures in Hannibal, Keokuk & Quincy
    Back in New York – A Night in Jail – Three Lectures in the Big Apple
    Quaker City Five-month Excursion– Miniature Portrait in the Bay of Smyrna
    A Post in Washington – Elisha Bliss – Sam Met Livy

  • November 22, 1867 Friday

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    November 22 Friday – Sam arrived in Washington, D.C. and roomed with his new employer, Senator William Morris Stewart (1827-1909) in a second-floor apartment run by 70-year-old Miss Virginia Wells“Clemens took his meals and socialized at the Round Robin bar at the Willard Hotel (see insert picture)….a favorite wa

  • November 29, 1867 Friday 

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    November 29 Friday – The New York Times ran a 1,700 word article on the front page signed by “Scupper Nong” about a meeting of a correspondent and General Ulysses S. Grant. Muller calls this the “Scupper Nong Letter” (in Chapter 3) and notes it was reprinted the following day in the Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph with the byline of Mark Twain [47]. The article was the result of Sam and Bill Swinton calling on Grant, who was not at home at the time.

  • December 1, 1867 Sunday

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    December 1 Sunday  Sam wrote from Washington, D.C. to John Russell Young about payment and questioned the amount of a $65 check he’d received. He also received a letter from Elisha P. Blisswhich he responded to the next day.

  • December 4, 1867 Wednesday

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    December 4 Wednesday  Sam wrote from Washington to John Russell Young again, asking if he might use the three letters he had sent in the book he was planning for Bliss“I am sorry to trouble you so much, but behold the world is full of sorrows, & grief is the heritage of man” [MTL 2: 125].

  • December 14, 1867 Saturday

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    December 14 Saturday  Sam dated an article this day, “Colonel Burke and the Fenians,” a humorous article for the Washington Evening Star, which was reprinted in many newspapers, including the Territorial Enterprise. The article suggested using a barrel of gunpowder to remove Edwin M.

  • December 16, 1867 Monday

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    December 16 Monday  Sam announced to his Territorial Enterprise readers that he had resigned his secretaryship, and that “E.A. Pretois, formerly of Virginia and Sacramento, is Senator Stewart’s private secretary, now” [MTL 2: 139n4]. Note: Sam and Senator Stewart did not hit it off, and the position had not kept Sam’s interest.

  • December 18, 1867 Wednesday

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    December 18 Wednesday – Sam’s article “Information Wanted” dated Dec. 10, ran in the New York Tribune [Camfield, bibliog.; The Twainian, Nov-Dec 1946 p.1-2]. Note: There is no connection with George Francis Train on this entry as mistakenly shown in the first edition.

  • December 25, 1867 Wednesday

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    December 25 Wednesday – Christmas – Sam arrived in New York for the holidays, and took a room in the Westminster Hotel [MTL 2: 142n1]. Since Sam did not arrive in New York until Dec. 25, Langdon family tradition and other scholars are incorrect that he met Olivia Langdon two days before Christmas.