February 11 Monday – In N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Calvin H. Higbie.
M . Clemens asks me to write for him & say that within a day or so you will receive a letter from his biographer M . Albert Bigelow Paine, who is planning to make a journey out to California in the early spring to collect material for his biography…. [MTP].
Paine quotes from his notebook for this day about memory: February 11, 1907. He said to-day:
“A blindfolded chess-player can remember every play and discuss the game afterward, while we can’t remember from one shot to the next.”
I mentioned his old pilot-memory as an example of what he could do if he wished.
“Yes,” he answered, “those are special memories; a pilot will tell you the number of feet in every crossing at any time, but he can’t remember what he had for breakfast.”
“How long did you keep your pilot-memory?” I asked.
“Not long; it faded out right away, but the training served me, for when I went to report on a paper a year or two later I never had to make any notes.”
“I suppose you still remember some of the river?”
“Not much. Hat Island, Helena and here and there a place; but that is about all” [MTB 1370].
Fatout lists a dinner speech for Sam at the Robert Collyer Dinner, N.Y.C. and gives these particulars about Collyer:
Robert Collyer (1823-1912) was a British-born Unitarian clergyman. An abolitionist, active on the Civil War Sanitary Commission, he was afterward pastor of Unity Church, Chicago, then of the Church of the Messiah, New York. He was a great success on the lyceum circuit with his popular lecture, “Clear Grit” [MT Speaking 676]. Note: Fatout gives no particulars of Sam’s speech.
Henry Blanchard wrote from Portland, Maine to advise Sam of an old schoolmate at Tufts College, who later became a Unitarian minister, J. Henry Wiggin. Blanchard quoted Wiggin that he had edited and rewritten much of the MS for Eddy’s Science and Health. Blanchard also mentioned he’d met Clemens in 1869 at the Bates House in Indianapolis and remembered Sam’s drollery [MTP].
Ted D. Marks, “International Amusement Promoter” wrote to Sam, reminding him they’d both been on a ship across the Atlantic, and Sam had been chairman of the concert Marks had “got up for the Benefit, for Seaman’s Orphans.” Marks had a “little business proposition” for Sam and asked to meet him [MTP].
Frank J. Symmes to Sam wrote on “The Merchants’ Association” letterhead, San Fransicso to invite Sam to the Apr. 18 Annual Dinner at the Fairmont Hotel, S.F. [MTP].
Clemens A.D. for this day is listed by MTP.