Submitted by scott on
July 13 Thursday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

That check comes mighty handy, & I am exceedingly obliged, I do assure you. I am communicating with that ole Joe who is given to kickin’ up behine & befo.’ Don’t you tempt me! You make me want to come to Fairhaven,“the factory,” in spite of the fact that I am very busy writing two books & a booklet—“Eve’s Diary.” When the weather gets cooler, I’m coming. Jean is with Clara at Norfolk; her account of the best of the journey fairly exhausts me. I was to have gone with her, but the thermometer appalled me & I dropped out of the game at the last moment. This is an easy summer for me but a tough one for you, & I haven’t a doubt that you are “but a shadow” of what you were. Well, we must go to Nantucket —maybe that would help Mrs. Rogers as much as Europe. Jesus! but I had a narrow escape. Suppose you had gone into humor instead of oil—where would I be? [MTHHR 591].

Sam also wrote to Joe Twichell.

I want you to accept this $1500 conscience-money if you will, as it marks the turning of a reform-corner for me: I’ve been into Wall street again in a small way & am out again with a profit of $4,700 & am not going in any more. This profit is tainted money; & lies heavy on my conscience; but I remember with a spiritual uplift that other new convert who found that her jewelry was dragging her down to hell, so she gave it to her sister Mary [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: The “Eve’s Diary” is beautiful. Mr. Clemens has made her such a lovable creature and so innocent and so human. “The same old sex” he said, when I said “Oh, but she’s a woman.”

Tonight as I finished playing the Cavatina Roff Mr. Clemens said “Patrick must take one or more of the girls to church every Sunday. He must see to it or this house will be damned or struck by lightning, and we haven’t any insurance on it.”

Tonight Mr. Clemens was talking of Mr. Rockefeller, and said that at a meeting of a board of Directors, Mr. Rockefeller would sit stolidly when the other directors would talk and shout themselves hoarse, and pull hairs out of his beard and lay them along on his knee. When the men had stopped their haranging, Mr. Rockefeller would brush the bristles off his knee and in a few words, a very few, settle the whole affair [MTP TS 77-79].

Day By Day Acknowledgment

Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.   

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