October 27 Sunday – The Sunday Magazine of the New York Tribune featured “Mark Twain’s Autobiography” and a full page portrait of him. An identical cover was published in the Sunday Magazine of the St. Louis Republic, as well as many other newspapers. See insert.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “I sat with the King a long time this morning. He said he couldn’t do any phrasing in answer to a note from someone, because he and Paine had played billiards until nearly 3 o’clock. / Knickerbocker coming along—perhaps” [MTP TS 119].
J.E. Caldwell wrote from Ottawa, Canada to “discharge a debt of gratitude” to Sam for helping him from “a financial embarrassment” in 1906 [MTP].
Frances Nunnally wrote from St. Timothy’s School in Catonsville, Md to Sam.
Dear MR. Clemens, — / I was so glad to get your letter and have been trying to find time to write to you ever since, but something is planned for us to do every minute of the day, and I do not have any time to myself. We have to study awfully hard, but then we have to take a certain amount of recreation every day, so that we keep in good health. We are outdoors almost all the afternoon, playing basket ball, or tennis, or some game like that. I have never been better in my life and my appetite is perfectly enormous, so that I am really getting fat.
It is almost November now and I hope you know positively that you are coming down to Annapolis, and you must be sure to stop by Baltimore. I should so love to have you come out here to our school, and all the other girls are crazy to have you come too. So if you find that you really can come down, please let me know, and come out to see us. The girls here are just as nice as they can be and I am sure you will like all of them. …. [MTAq 79].
October 27 ca. – Sam wrote to the Editor of the New York World, who evidently had requested he write something appropriate for Thanksgiving.
To the Editor of the World.
Sir: you ask me for a sentiment which shall state how much I have to be thankful for, this time.
For years it has been a rule, with me, not to expose my gratitude in print on Thanksgiving Day, but I wish to break the rule, now, & pour out my thankfulness, for there is more of it than I can contain without straining myself. I am thankful—thankful beyond words—that I had only fifty- one thousand dollars on deposit in the Knickerbocker Trust, instead of a million; for if I had had a million in that bucket shop I should be nineteen times as sorry as I am now.Trusting that this paean of joy will satisfy your requirement, I am / Yours truly / Mark Twain [MTP].
Sam took his above letter to the President and Directors of the Knickerbocker Trust Co., N.Y.
I expect nothing out of you—at least, nothing but your disapproval of me for publishing the above, along with this letter. You discriminated against me by accepting two deposits from me after some had been warned to take their money out. Instead of putting your hands in your pockets, & paying your debts, like the Lincoln Trust & other respectable concerns, you have been shillyshallying for a month trying to escape your obligations & find some more economical & less reputable way to resume. Why do you wish to resume? Do you suppose any one will risk money with you again? Next time you will bring up in jail, where you probably ought to have been many & many a year ago. At large, you are a common danger, whereas in jail you would be useful—useful, as an example. Also happy, for you would be at home; at home, & among sympathetics, sympathetics, & all harmonious, all wearing the same handsome stripes. Oh, you must not think of resuming, it would make the people to laugh, as the French say. And they would say the most sarcastic things about you, just as they are doing now. They would remember that the government & the capitalists hastened to rescue the Lincoln & the other reputable trusts, but hadn’t a kind word for you, nor a dollar. I am your friend, & I assure you it will be a mistake for you to resume. / Affectionately, / M. T. [MTP].