November 20 Tuesday – Dean Sage visited Twichell from Nov. 19 to 21. Twichell’s journal entry notes they went “to lunch at Mark Twain’s at noon” [Yale, copy at MTP].

November 21 Wednesday – E.S. Sykes, Hartford druggists wrote to Sam: “I return herewith your letter as requested. I read it to the Board as proposed. And it certainly set you right with those gentlemen who knew of yr. connection with the matter. / Feeling sure that if others were as ready to do their part as you have shown yourself to do yours that our poor would not want assistance, I remain… [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env “The performance that didn’t come off”

November? 22 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles E. Flower, advising that since receiving his letter about the Shakespeare Memorial, he had corresponded with some New York newspaper men. Sam and Livy stayed with the Flower family on their first trip to London together and Sam had used his influence to help Flower raise funds in the U.S. [MTLE 2: 198].

November 23 Friday – Sam dated several story and book ideas in his notebook, including one “in which the telephone plays a principal part (the germ of the story “The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton” published in the Atlantic for Mar. 1878). He wrote notes for Prince and the Pauper, which he’d worked on in the summer of 1877.

November 26 Monday – Eighteen year old William (“Will”) M. Clemens (1860-1931) wrote to Sam, the first of over a dozen he would write by 1909.

To “That Uncle of mine”

Dear Mark; / I have just finished the “Gilded age,” for the second time, and I am determined to write you, not, for the sake of the book but to form an acquaintance with yourself.

      I am a young man of 18, or a boy in his teens, just as you like it.

November 27 Tuesday – Livy’s 32nd birthday. Sam gave her Pottery and Porcelain of All Times and Nations (1878) by William Cowper Prime (1825-1905). Sam inscribed it: “Livy Clemens from S.L.C./ November 27, 1877/ Hartford” [Gribben 560].

November 29 Thursday – An unidentified “young girl” sent Clemens a poem aiming at his soul: “I gave my life for thee, / My precious blood I shed, / That thou might’st ransomed be, / and quickened from the dead; / I gave my life for thee; / What hast thou done for me?” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env “From a young girl whom I do not know, but who has been trying for 7 years to save me—ever since she was 14”

November 30 Friday – Sam’s 42nd birthday.

December – The third of a four-part, 15,000 word article on Sam and Joe Twichell’s trip to Bermuda, ran in the Atlantic Monthly: “Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion” [Wells 22].

December 1 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to an unidentified person who solicited an autograph. Sam responded that the “great question of the day” didn’t disturb him because he believed there wouldn’t be any eternal punishment, “except for the man who invented steel pens” [MTLE 2: 199].

December 1-15 Saturday –During this period Sam wrote to the Chicago Union Veteran Club:

December 3 Monday – Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk to congratulate Sam on his recent birthday, to make suggestions how he might purchase the Post with a thousand down and a mortgage for ten thousand. “If I got into the printing business again I should subordinate my whims to my business.” He then wrote about “how lawyers get into business,” and ended with a PS thanking for the Atlantic Monthly [MTP].

December 4 Tuesday – John Napton (1843-1917) and brothers wrote from Elkhill, Mo. to Sam.

“Mark Twain” / Dear Sir,

      Is there the slightest probability of your writing and publishing any other books. “Innocents Abroad” “Roughing It” & “The Gilded Age” have about up-set our youngest brother Frank (the youngest of nine)—a youth of seventeen, now six feet two in his stocking-feet, and like yourself, a “Missouri puke,” “and to the manner born.”

December 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to D.F. Appleton, head of the New England Society (see Dec. 22 entry). The society had invited Sam to attend their 72nd anniversary at Delmonico’s in New York on Dec. 22. Sam begged “an offensive business engagement that day in Hartford,” and so declined to attend.

December 9 Sunday – Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk to Sam, enclosing a short article “A Snide Book Agent,” which perpetrated a fraud selling a book “Elbow Room,” by Max Adeler as one by Twain. Orion is mentioned in the article and his letter describes his investigations into the matter [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Dec. 9/77 – Orion’s story about Sir John Franklin,” one of Orion’s literary efforts also enclosed.

December 10 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford per Fanny Hesse to Andrew Chatto, thanking him for the royalty check of £15 and for “the other half of the Arabian Nights.” Sam wrote he might have an article soon [MTLE 2: 202].

December 11 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford per Fanny Hesse to an unidentified person:

To the Editor of —— [Sam may have sent several letters to western papers, or specifically the paper that Orion clipped the article from, unknown]

December 12 Wednesday – William Dean Howells arrived and stayed at the Clemens home (see Nov. 23 entry). Howells appeared on the Seminary Hall Lecture Course, Seminary Hall, Hartford, where Sam introduced him. The Hartford Times, Dec. 13, gave a fragment:

December 13 Thursday – Howells spoke on Venice at the Clemens house to an “extra” meeting of the Saturday Morning Girls’ Club. Twichell also attended [Twichell’s journal, Yale].

From Twichell’s journal, of the events of Dec. 12 and 13 (written Dec. 14):

December 15 Saturday – Orion wrote from Keokuk: “Your letter of 11th with the notices for the papers received. You will see from my last letter that they are not necessary, as the case was probably that of a book agent stuck with some of Max Adeler’s books and trying to work them off.” He suggested that Sam take his “Kingdom of Sir John Franklin” sketch and “use it as a skeleton or as memoranda, expand it into a book…” [MTP].

December 17 Monday – Sam gave his infamous dinner speech at John Greenleaf Whittier’s birthday dinner, Hotel Brunswick, Boston, Mass. [Fatout, MT Speaking 110-4]. The speech was a rambling burlesque about three tramps in the mining country foothills of the Sierras pretending to be Holmes, Emerson and Longfellow. The sketch fell flat and cold on the august assembly.

December 18 Tuesday – Sam was still in Boston. (See Dec. 20 entry to Starbird.) Sam and William Dean Howells did some window-shopping. Howells sent Sam a one-liner, addressed to the Parker House: “All right, you poor soul!” Sam returned to Hartford either this day or Dec. 19, when he wrote Orion. Charles E. Perkins wrote to advise Sam he’d credited him $360 interest from Burnham [MTP].

December 19 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion, who had given Sam an idea for a book (see Dec. 15 from Orion). Sam’s answer sounded more like a put-upon father than a brother, which is the way he often answered Orion. But then, Sam did not suffer fools lightly.

“Dr Bro—If I write all the books that lie planned in my head, I shall see the middle of the next century. I can’t add another, until after that. I couldn’t write from another man’s ideas, anyway. But go ahead & write it yourself—that is, if you can drop other things” [MTLE 2: 205].

December 20 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Follen Adams (1842-1918) in Boston. Sam thanked Adams and wrote that “several of the pieces are familiar to me, & I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of the rest” [MTLE 2: 206]. Adams had sent his Leedle Yawcob Strauss, and Other Poems (1878; preface dated 1877) [Gribben 7].

December 21 Friday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote Sam a note announcing he’d sent him a present of several books. No mention was made of the Whittier birthday dinner [MTHL 1: 211].

December 22 Saturday – Sam’s “Letter of Regret” was read to the Seventy-Second Anniversary Celebration of the New England Society in the City of New York at Delmonico’s. Sam dated the letter Dec. 5 from Hartford (see Dec. 5 entry) [Fatout, MT Speaks 109].