• Elmira, Summer of 1883

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    June 14, 1883:  Clemens family travels from Hartford to New York.

    June 15, 1883:  The Clemens family left New York City and traveled by special sleeping car to Elmira

    June 22, 1883:  Sam traveled to New York City. Unknown how long he stayed...

    September 13, 1883:  The Clemens family departs Elmira and traveled to new York, on their way home to Hartford.

  • June 15, 1883 Friday 

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    June 15 Friday  The Clemens family left New York City and traveled by special sleeping car to Elmira [MTBus 214].

    Twichell noted in his journal, “our eighth child and fourth son was b. about 11 AM” [Yale, copy at MTP]. The boy was named Joseph Hooker Twichell.

  • June 17, 1883 Sunday 

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    June 17 Sunday – Under the headline “ENGLISH BADLY FLAYED” The New York Times, p.10 ran an article about Sam’s introduction to The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English by J. Osgood & Co.

  • June 18, 1883 Monday

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    June 18 Monday  Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles WebsterSam anticipated a suit about the “strawberries interview” about Duncan, and directed Charley not to say anything to George Jones  (1811-1891), one of the founders of the New York Times.

  • June 19, 1883 Tuesday 

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    June 19 Tuesday – Noah Brooks wrote that he’d been subpoenaed on behalf of the prosecution in Duncan’s suit, but that he knew nothing. “I wish you could get the case removed from Brooklyn. That is a bad place for you; Duncan will have things fixed to suit him” [MTP].

  • June 23, 1883 Saturday 

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    June 23 Saturday – The New York Times reported that Sam was staying at the Hotel Brunswick [“PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE,” p8]. When Sam went to the City after June 20 and how long he stayed has not yet been pinned down, but newspaper reports in the Times generally fell a day later than his first night’s stay, which would make his arrival in the city Friday, June 22.

  • June 27, 1883 Wednesday

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    June 27 Wednesday – Bissell & Co. per George H. Burt wrote, “If present appearance are correct you are overdrawn $1662.73 we will send the usual statement the 1st prox” [MTP].

    Richard L. Ogden finished his June 26 letter [MTP].

  • June 28, 1883 Thursday

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    June 28 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster, who evidently had passed the idea of travel to California to invest in vineyards. Joe Goodman was involved in vineyards but he isn’t mentioned in this letter, although Samuel Webster writes that Goodman may have inspired the interest in vineyards [217]. Sam answered that no way should Webster go to 

  • July 1883

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    July – Sam invented the English history game with pegs up the Quarry Farm driveway for different years from 1066. He then made the commercial board game and involved Charles Webster.

  • July 5, 1883 Thursday 

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    July 5 Thursday – “An American on American Humour” appeared in the St. James GazetteThomas Sergeant Perrys article reported Sam’s humor as “representative of a democratic, serious, ironic quality in American national character, reacting against Europe, though not independently and perhaps not in hostility” [Tenney 12].

  • July 8, 1883 Sunday

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    July 8 Sunday – Karl Gerhardt wrote of the “great interest” taken in him by Dr. Augustus F. Beard of the American chapel, a brother of “the artist Beard of New York animal painter I think.” More expense accounts sent and thoughts of going to Florence to study [MTP]. Note: because such a sojourn in Florence would require him to leave wife and child in Paris, Gerhardt struggled with it for some time.