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October 21 Sunday – In N.Y.C. Sam went “Sabbath-breaking” to Urban H. Broughton’s, and beat him five out of seven games at billiards [Oct. 22 to Mary Rogers].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “All day it has rained hard & Mr. Clemens went out to the Broughtons to play billiards. He is restless & finds a great emptiness in life. He doesn’t like this house & finds no comfort outside of his own room. My own little six sided room is the only place I care for—that & the King’s room” [MTP TS 137-138].

Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Harriet E. Whitmore. Unable to go to Hartford  this week for the 30 anniversary of the Saturday Morning Club, the event was postponed to Sat. Nov. 3. Sam would take Harriet’s suggestion and arrive on Friday, Nov. 2; Lyon was to accompany him. Clara was well but not so Jean [MTP].

Jean Clemens, also now at 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y., wrote to a friend, Nancy D. Brush. Jean was going the next day to look over Katonah, N.Y., an hour and a half by train; she would go there Wed. Oct. 25 to stay and be treated by Dr. Amut. Jean felt like she needed a higher altitude than N.Y.C., having felt “lifeless and tired almost all the time” in the City. She was looking forward to tennis and croquet at Katonah. She hoped Nancy would stop there on her way to Italy [MTP].

George Barr Baker (1870-1948), journalist with The Delineator, editor at Everybody’s Magazine, author, and activist later connected with international relief agencies, wrote on Players note paper to Sam about a young girl who would become an Angelfish, Dorothy Butes [MTP]. Note: see Dorothy’s letter Oct. 25.

Note: in his 1925 reminiscences, Some Memoirs of a Very, Very, Very Old Dutch Treater, Julian Street writes: “Baker was liked by everyone, but at that time no one suspected the extraordinary versatility which has since made him president of the First National Bank, Professor of Dramatic Art at Yale University and Dictator of the Republican Party.” Baker was later publicist for President Herbert Hoover.

Isabel Lyon also replied for Sam to the day’s letter from George Barr Baker “I am seldom absent from this house in the afternoons, & shall be glad to see her any afternoon; if she will name the hour by telephone I will make it a point to be at home [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.