January 3 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
It has been such a sweet, long, drowsing day, with a beautiful smooth sea; the King has slept, & so has Mr. Twichell …(there goes the dinner trumpet.) the picking up of loose ragged ends; getting ready for Hobby who will look after the mail while I’m away; & getting ready for & over the party. Of course I have relaxed.
The King brought along 2 batches of Auto Ms. to correct & this morning he sat on deck & smoked for a long time. He didn’t like his chair over in the long line, so when I found him sitting on a bench aft of everybody, & where he could watch the sea, he bade me sit down & we talked for a long time about the way the auto. Should be used to perpetuate the copyright of the books, & he was glad when I told him that C.C. appreciated his plan. I didn’t tell him though that I was sorry he had let newspaper men get hold of the scheme. Some how I think it would have been nice to keep it quiet; though of course it originated with Sir Walter Scott. People are not disturbing the King. The one woman who tried to, I told [her] that the King wished to be let alone, must be let alone, because he had come away exhausted. Mr. Twichell tries him beyond words—so that the King almost loses patience [MTP]. Note: Twichell had grown deaf and Sam had to yell at him to be understood.
E.B. Overshiner for the Adjustarest Co. wrote to advertise their adjustable bed to Sam [MTP]. On or after this date Sam replied: “Should like to have it & if it comforts me I shall speak of it to friends but not to you or to the public” [MTP].
J.H. Brookes wrote for Abner Martin (age 88) from East Liverpool, Ohio to Sam.
…Mr. Abner Martin, formerly mate on the steamboat Pennsylvania, which blew up below Memphis in 1858…Mr. Martin (who sits at my elbow) tells me that in your book…[LM]…you mention the fact that you saw him carried into the death room on three separate occasions. …
Some time ago Mr. Martin received a letter from a colored man named Jerry Brown. This man is the son of Brown, the porter on the Pennsylvania, who Mr. Martin assures me you will remember. At the time of the explosion he was a boy seventeen years old and was on the Pennsylvania, and Mr. Martin believes that Brown and himself are the only survivors now living. / Mr. Martin has from time to time recited to me a number of anecdotes concerning “Mark Twain” which I have been unable to find in my careful reading of your works, but nevertheless have no doubt but that they actually occurred. / He remembers with much pleasure his last meeting with you at the Monongahela House, in Pittsburg, when you were considerate enough to have him come up to your room and spend an hour or more in enjoying a good smoke and in talking over old times [MTP].
Will Caeleton wrote from Brooklyn to invite Sam to an Author’s Matinee benefit for The Mary Fisher Home. Caeleton mentions going with Sam to Albany that time to lobby for osteopathy [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on back: “Decline by telegraph.”
Mrs. Margaret Christensen wrote from Brooklyn to Sam. She had put a clipping from the NY Journal, “Mark Twain’s Loving Tribute to His Wife” on her bureau and saw it daily, seeking to “possess such a character” as Livy’s. She caught a glimpse of him on Broadway one day and wished she could hear him speak. “Surely at heart you are still a boy.” [MTP]. Note: Sam answered on Jan. 18.
Emily McLean for the National Society of the D.A.R. wrote a 4”x5” card to Sam. “If you but knew my dear ‘Mr. Mark Twain!’, the ardent admiration for yourself, which pulses in my mind & heart, which fills the soul of my young daughter & — in a more general sense—the souls of fifty thousand ‘Daughters’ (over whom I preside), you would come & be welcomed by us!” [MTP]. Note: In other words, they liked him.