January 9 Saturday – The Clemens children were rehearsing for their performance of the P&P play. Sam wanted to see Clara’s part, the Lady Jane Grey, given more lines in her scene with the Pauper, played by Margaret (Daisy) Warner. From Daisy’s diary (with her charming spellings):

January 10 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote a short note of thanks to Dr. Frank B. Darby, his dentist in Elmira, for sending an “addition” to his “works of art” on Jan. 4.

They are pinned up, in the billiard room & their exceeding ister ingenuity fetches out lots of applause [MTP]. Note: see July 2-10, 1884 entry for time spent in Darby’s dentist chair.

January 11 Monday – The American Publishing Company wrote Sam a check drawn on the First National Bank of Hartford for $646.68 for literary royalties [MTP]

January 12 Tuesday – Orion Clemens wrote to Sam, bemoaning in burlesque the fact that he’d not received the monthly stipend for himself and their Ma for the month:

Is he too busy? Can it be possible that he has after all let the books go without first receiving the money? If so, we are all on the ragged edge of hell. O, my poor grocer! My unhappy butcher! My sainted landlady! The devil has got us all! Affectionately, [MTP].

January 13 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam responded to a plan sent by Charles Webster, probably on Jan. 9, about paying dividends, notes, and the funds due Mrs. Grant, or 70% of the royalties for Grant’s Memoirs. Sam felt Webster’s plan as he understood it amounted to borrowing to pay dividends; that it would be best to pay off the notes first and reserve 30% of what was left in cash, paying the balance to Mrs. Grant [MTP].

January 14 Thursday – In Hartford Sam wrote a short note to Charles Webster, acknowledging receipt of $480 from the Slote Co. and $646.68 from American Publishing Co. He PS’d that Webster had not sent the monthly checks to Keokuk for his mother and brother.

January 15 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote to James B. Pond reminding, “Chamberlaine’s letter distinctly begged me to implore you to give him a date for Cable.” Sam didn’t have to fill in for Cable should he be unable to attend, and wouldn’t go to Concord, Mass. for the reading “in any circumstances.” Note: Mr. & Mrs. Augustus P. Chamberlaine were friends of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

January 16 Saturday – Howells ended his visit this day or the next, and wrote thanks on Jan. 18 from Auburndale, Mass. [MTHL 2: 550].

Worden & Co., Wall Street brokers, wrote acknowledging Sam’s return of a $50 check to C. Depew, for a dividend to be shared [MTP]. Note: Chauncey Depew.

January 17 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote to George Henry Himes (1844-1940), about old Hannibal fellow printers Urban E. Hicks, Thomas P. (Pet) McMurray, and Wales R. McCormick. He thanked Himes for sending a text (unspecified) and mentioned he was to speak at the printers’ dinner in New York.

January 18 Monday – Sam went to New York, where he spoke at the Typothetae Dinner at Delmonico’s. From Fatout:

January 20 Wednesday – The Hartford Courant ran “The Typothete,” on pages 1-2, quoting Sam’s New York speech of Jan. 18 at Delmonico’s.

One of the festive events in New York city Monday evening was the yearly Delmonico dinner of the Typotheter. This peculiar and rather awe-inspiring word is alleged to be Greek and so signify being interpreted, gentlemen, who have accumulated wealth by hiring other gentlemen to stick type for them.

January 21 Thursday – An amendment to the co-partnership agreement for Webster & Co. Was added. It gave Charles Webster the right to withdraw more of his share of the profits (save on Grant’s Memoirs), raised his salary to $3,000, and put the interest rate on Sam’s capital invested down to six percent from eight [MTLTP 170]. Note: the source does not say, but presumably the amended “No. 2” contract was signed this day.

January 22 Friday – James B. Pond wrote to Sam; he’d been on the road with Clara Louise Kellogg and was trying unsuccessfully to get a commitment from George W. Cable for a reading in Concord, Mass. Pond confessed that Sam’s “letter could be read both ways, or at least I read it so” [MTP]. See Jan. 20 entry.

January 23 Saturday – Ambrose Bierce’s short article in The Wasp (San Francisco) was a sneering discussion of Sam’s Jan. 18 speech at the Typothetae Dinner. Bierce felt Sam had lost his humor: “foremost among those desecrators of the tomb of Mark the Jester is Mark the Money-worm….”his last atrocious desecration” was the speech as reported by the Associated Press.

January 24 Sunday – William C. Prime wrote to Sam from New York, asking when Sam might be in town to discuss the McClellan book. Prime was representing General George B. McClellan’s widow for publishing the General’s memoirs. [MTP]. Note: Prime also wrote Dec. 31, 1885.

In 1908, Sam dictated this about Prime, who was James Hammond Trumbull’s brother-in law:

January 25 Monday – William Mackay Laffan for the N.Y. Sun. Wrote warning that he’d seen the Baltimore (Mergenthaler) machine set type on Saturday Jan 23:

…every daily in this town will be set up by that machine inside of twelve months….This is confidential; but you’d better haul in your tents and [illegible] like hell [MTP].

January 26 Tuesday – In New York, headed to Washington the next day, Sam sent his love to the “chil’n” in a letter to Livy.

Livy dear, the contracts are signed & delivered, & everything is satisfactory.

January 27 Wednesday – Sam left New York in the morning and traveled by train to Washington. He intended to stay at the Ebbitt House.

January 28 Thursday – In Washington, D.C., Sam spoke before the U.S. Senate Committee, His “Remarks on Copyright” can be found in Fatout’s Mark Twain Speaking, p.206-9. Fatout prefaces:

January 29 Friday – As Fatout points out, Sam was somewhat ambivalent about the Hawley Bill but when pressed on the matter before the Senate Committee on Patents on the second day of testimony, he said:

January 30 Saturday – Sam was at the Hotel Normandie in New York [Prime’s Jan. 29].

The copyright issue and bills in the U.S. Congress also resonated overseas. The London Pall Mall Gazette carried an article, “THE AMERICANS AND INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT” on p.7:

January 31 Sunday – From the Hotel Normandie in New York City, Sam wrote a short letter to William C. Prime, who was representing General George B. McClellan’s widow for publishing the General’s memoirs. Charles L. Webster & Co. Published McClellan’s Own Story in 1887.

February – An agreement was reached with James W. Paige and William J. Hamersley stimulated by their Jan. 20 meeting with Sam in Elmira. Sam would undertake additional capitalization input in exchange for half ownership in the Paige typesetter. Kaplan writes:

February 1 Monday – Back in Hartford Sam wrote to Charles Webster, advising him to try and put publishing General Grant’s letters to Mrs. Grant off for a year. He wrote that Livy suggested it and they’d talked it over. 

February 2 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to an unidentified man who evidently had asked him to write more opinion of copyright law:

I had very little to say, & I said it in the current Century & before the committee…And anyway, writing miscellaneous[s] articles is a thing which I disenjoy [MTP].