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December 19 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “Dinner engagement / Miss Winifred Holt / 44 East 78th Street. / Dentist Dr. Fulton / Dr. Fournier’s Associate. / at 3. 66 E. 58th” [MTP TS 37].

James Bertram, personal secretary for Andrew Carnegie wrote from N.Y.C. to Sam, advising that “In the course of a few weeks a cask will be delivered to you which Mr. Carnegie says you will please not hesitate to receive….” On or about this day Sam replied:

“Very glad to hear about that cask & I shall watch out for it with very agreeable anticipations— that I’m like Mr. Carnegie with the eggs—I like to have all my whiskey in one keg & then I can watch that keg” [MTP]. Note: Carnegie was the originator of the aphorism Sam often used about putting all of one’s eggs in one basket and watching that basket.

At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Sam replied to an old friend and typesetter-workmate on the St. Louis Daily News in 1855, William S. Grieg, who had written on Dec. 16 from St. Louis about the times in the early 1850s on the St. Louis Evening News with a young Sam.

I have forgotten the Frenchman, but I remember the others. The excellent Ruggles—tall, slender, & with bulging eyes—became a distinguished & honored Judge in Kansas. Simmons, the refined & intellectual consumptive—a pathetic figure—I remember him well. I remember the Ricards class; also the ass who could not be taught to pronounce “une singe” otherwise than “amn Sygie”; & the mouse dans san trou he pronounced “daunz sun trow (like ou in Ouch) /

Sincerely your friend….[MTP].

Note: the “ass” whose name Sam could not recall may have been William G. Waite, as revealed in a New York Times feature article which ran on June 8, 1902, “Mark Twain Among Scenes of His Early Life.” Here are two of the final paragraphs of the article, noting another compositor in those early 1850s, one unnamed in Grieg’s Dec. 16 or in Sam’s above reply of Dec. 19:

OTHER OLD FRIENDS

William G. Waite, now a printer in The St. Louis Republic composing room worked with Mark Twain in the early fifties, when he, too, was a printer. They were employed in the old Evening News office in St. Louis, and the future author worked a year in that capacity.

“He was a good printer,” said Waite, “but mighty independent. He was always called, ‘that boy’ by Charles G. Ramsey, proprietor and editor of The News. He’d get down late once in a while, and Ramsey would say: ‘Here’s that _____ boy late again.’ Clemens didn’t say anything to this for a long time, but one morning he turned on Ramsey and replied: ‘Take your dashed situation, and got to (a warm country)!’ He left the office and we heard nothing of him for several years.

Sam sent another Dec. 6 form thank you letter for the occasion of his 70th to Louise A. Howland (Robert’s widow), now in Sausalito, Calif. Sam added a paragraph:

 To think of you as a grandmother! It is quite impossible. It was a good deal of a strain to think of you as a mother; still, I managed it, being greatly helped there to by the picture of the child —good sound & solid evidence; unadorned evidence—even naked evidence; for the plump creature was reclining in an oyster shell while its wardrobe was at the wash [MTP].

In N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Robert Underwood Johnson, that Clemens would be unable to attend the dinner of the Academy of Arts and letters on Friday, Dec. 29 [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: Tonight Mr. Clemens dined with Miss Winifred Holt and sat between her and Miss May Sinclair. When Miss Holt had finished a long talk on the goodness of God, and his mercies to her, Mr. Clemens asked her if she could account for God’s reason for making a pet of her and terrible slaves and sufferers of other human beings. She shivered at his blasphemies [MTP TS 115]. Note: Winifred Holt (1870-1945), sculptor and founder of the NY Assoc. for the Blind. May Sinclair (1865-1946) British novelist.

Thomas S. Barbour for the Congo Reform Assoc. wrote to Sam, not yet hearing from Elihu Root. Barbour thought he might go to NY this night, or in the morning, and enclosed slips (not in file) they printed this day. “Possibly you may have seen the article in the West African Mail” [MTP].

George Albert Bramley wrote to ask Sam if he could speak at the YMCA of the West Presbyterian Church for their award dinner at the Hotel Vendome, on Friday evening, the 19th of January [MTP].

William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.

I am going to do a series of reprints from their periodicals for H.B. & Co. The first volume will consist of six stories, and will be called “Their Husbands’ Wives”—that is, wives peculiarly and self-sacrificially devoted to their husbands. In this volume I should like to include your “Eve’s Diary,” which exactly denotes the typical attitude of the feminine soul. Can you let me have it, and if yes, for what money outright, a percentage being practicable? Of course, Eve was never legally Adam’s wife, but lived with him in a state which under the circumstances left no stain on her reputation. It was a kind of common-law marriage, and as you have given it the stamp of your approval, I do not think her inclusion among other devoted wives will seriously damage the series. There would be five other stories in the book, for which you need not blush ethically or artistically. You could freely use the piece in any collection of your own soon or late. The fact of the enterprise is confided to you. / Yours ever … [MTHL 2: 799-800]. Note: Sam agreed, exacting no set price—see source notes 1&2.

Frank R. Lawrence wrote to Sam for the Lotus Club, N.Y.C. asking if they might use his name for the committee in honor of Mrs. Craigie on the afternoon of Dec. 28, and, “would it be possible for [him] to come and say a few words on that occasion?” On or just after this day Sam replied that using his name would be an honor, but he had another engagement for that evening and had to “rest in bed during the after-noon” [MTP]. Note: Pearl Mary Teresa Richards Craigie, pseud. John Oliver Hobbes (1867-1906). See also July 5, 1907.

Edmund D. Morel for the Congo Reform Assoc., Liverpool, wrote a mostly illegible letter to Sam [MTP].

Nemo (no further identification) wrote from Conn. to Sam after reading an article in the NY Sun by a Catholic priest which he claimed contradicted “something that you have written about Belgium in Africa,” but he knew Sam’s story was true and gave reasons. “I want your story about the Congo. I shall enjoy it as I have every thing that you have written and I believe tghat I have read all of your stories including your private letter to the Mammoth Cod Association” [MTP].

Channing Pollock for the Lyric Theater wrote to Sam, sending at Lyon’s request, a box for Friday evening at the Lyric Theatre [MTP].

Volney Streamer wrote to send Sam a “belated” birthday gift, a “little book” (unspecified). He was “going about chorteling over your speech of Nov. 30the and especially the thought that all this you have done has been play!” [MTP].

R.E. Warren wrote from St.Louis to ask why Sam didn’t live in Missouri? And, had he ever lived for a short time in Cape Girardeau, Mo? “I have been told that you did live there for a short time; that you worked as a clerk for the well known war-time merchant there, Edmund Garaghty…until you were “fired” by him for presuming to fall in love with one of his charming daughters. Is it so?”  [MTP].

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.