January 24 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Sam wrote to Mr. and Mrs. William P.Gordon in Bunker Hill, Illinois.
I have just received your golden-wedding At Home, & am trying to adjust my focus to it & realize how much it means. It carries me back, with a single prodigious sweep, almost to the half-century mere-stone. It brings before me Mrs. Gordon, young, round-limbed & handsome, & with her the Youngbloods & their babies, & Laura Wright, that unspoiled little maid, that fresh flower of the woods & the prairies. All this is inconceivably long ago! it seems measurable only by astronomical terms & geological periods. Life was a fairy tale then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 & John Hay 41, he said life was always a tragedy after 40, & I disputed it. Three years ago he reminded me of this & challenged me to testify again: I counted my graves, & there was nothing for me to say.
I am old; I recognise it, but I don’t realize it. I wonder if anybody ever really ceases to feel young — I mean, for a whole day at a time. My love to you both, & to all of us that are left [MTP]. Note: William C. Youngblood was a pilot on the John J. Roe when Sam met Laura Wright, Youngblood’s niece in May 1858 [MTL 1: 114n7]. Gordon may have been an officer on the Roe.
Sam also wrote a short note to Magnus Gross, educator and President of the NYC Teachers’ Organization: “Dear Sir: / I thank you very much for the compliment of your invitation, but I am obliged to decline it as I have made all the engagements for this year that I can keep” [MTP]. Note: Gross’ invitation not extant.
Sam received the illustrations for “A Horse’s Tale.”
Clemens’ A.D. for this day: Tells of the defeat of James G. Blaine for the Presidency, and how Clemens’s, Joe Twichell’s, and Rev. Francis Goodwin’s votes were cast for Grover Cleveland [AMT 1: 315-319].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
It was a living picture that went along before me today in the upper hall. This afternoon Mr. Hitchcock came with the illustrations for The Horse’s Tale. They are lovely, full of heart and life, and Mr. Clemens got out of bed to go into the study to look at them. Jean had been promised that she should see them, and when I suggested that they be taken up to her room, where she is confined by a burned arm, Mr. Clemens said he’d take one of them, and I could carry the rest. So up we came; Mr. Clemens ahead with his sliding-off old grey slippers flopping on every step and his delicate ankles, looking so very slim from under his long tan colored Vienna dressing gown. Along the hall he went—the light ahead shining through his hair like a halo—all eagerness to show the pictures of “Soldier Boy” to Jean. But Jean as only half aware.
Later I telephoned to Mr. Duneka about Mr. Clemens’s pleasure over the pictures. Duneka has been having a hard time to find an artist for Eve’s Diary. There doesn’t seem to be anybody but Strothman, to his mind, and while he is good as an illustrator for Adam’s Diary, he could never do Eve’s. Mr. Duneka seems to think there was a dearth of subjects for Eve, but Mr. Clemens counted up 36 in a short time dictating them to me and I sent that list to Duneka [MTP TS 17- 18; also Hill 120 in part]. Notes: Fred Strothman (1879-1958) illustrated Extracts From Adam’s Diary; Lester Ralph (1877-1927), Eve’s Diary. See a discussion of these books and illustrators in the 1996 Oxford facsimile volume of both, afterword p. 21-26. 55 illustrations were published in Eve’s Diary appearing on each text-facing page.
Winifred Holt for the N.Y. Assoc. for the Blind wrote to thank Sam for his $5 contribution; she would send invitations for the Mar. 29 meeting so he could give them to appreciative friends [MTP].
Ella M. Howland wrote to Sam, impressed by the pamphlet, “King Leopold’s Soliloquy.” A printed letter from the Congo Reform Assoc. is in the file with Howland’s letter, folded to fit the accompanying envelope [MTP]. Note: see Lyon’s journal entry of Jan. 23, which suggests this date is off.
Dennis J. Mahoney wrote from Mahanoy ? City, Pa. to Sam after reading his speech at Carnegie Hall. Sam was “a true American” [MTP]. Note: Sam replied on Feb. 3; see entry.
Mrs. M. Wortman wrote from Leadville, Colo. to offer Sam her cure for rheumatism, “so cheap and simple”—cream of tarter and Asafoetida pills [MTP]. Note: from an Indian herb, also called “Devil’s dung.”
An unidentified “old, old woman” wrote from Hartford to hope that Sam knew Christ “the way, the Truth, and the Life” [MTP].
January 24 ca. – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Sam wrote to Duffield Osborne (1858-1917), author and editor, at this time secretary of the Authors Club.
I thank you cordially for the kind words with which you have closed your note; they are very welcome & have given me great pleasure. Are you ever down my way? There are some things which I should like to talk with you privately about. I am leaving town for a week; after that I am quite likely to be at home every day & all day, & shall be glad to hear from you by mail or telephone. My tel address, which is private & not in the book, is— [MTP; a draft]. Note: JoDee Benussi identifies an announcement for a May 20, 1915 sale by Anderson Galleries of HF, together with “a signed letter by Mark Twain to Duffield Osborne, in which Mark Twain gives … his private telephone number….” This is almost certainly the original of the above draft, and is given UCCL 09877 by MTP.