December 2 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean.
Dear Jean I will attend to the matter regarding translations, even if the pay be very small in money it will be large in entertainment for you & well worth the labor it will cost you.
The more I examine the copper plate, plaque, platter, or whatever its name may be, the more beautiful it grows & the more I am charmed with it. You have put a world of patient & careful work upon it, dear child, & the result is a high credit to you. How delighted your mother would be with it if she could see it!
We have the right backing for its copper splendors—the dead red of the billiard-room paper.
Good-night, & lots of love & kisses [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Margery H. Clinton.
Dear Miss Margery: / I thank you so much for the beautiful remembrancer, & for the accompanying good wish.
I am glad to know that you got home safely. If I had piloted you all through as inefficiently as I began, I am afraid you wouldn’t have reached home at all.
Greeting, & salutation, & good night! [MTP]. Note: Margery was a friend and neighbor of Mary Rogers; likely Sam was thanking her for a birthday gift, a “remembrancer,” being likely a photograph.
Sam also wrote to Emilie R. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers). “Dear Mrs. Rogers: / It helps to reconcile me to my antiquity to have it recognized and approved in this lovely way. I thank you for the roses, and for the remembrance, dear Mrs. Rogers” [MTHHR 643].
Robert Erskine Ely for the N.Y. Economic Club wrote to Miss Lyon about Sam’s resignation from the Economic Club of New York; they wanted him to pay dues in order to resign [MTP].
M. Samnis, “a poor woman, sixty five years old,” wrote from Newark, NJ to send birthday wishes to Sam [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Dec. 6, ‘07”
Of the selections from Twain’s A.D.’s, DeVoto selected about half of the materials not chosen before by Paine to be included in Mark Twain in Eruption (1940); among DeVoto’s choices, was a sketch on Andrew Carnegie dictated this day; Sam underlined Carnegie’s vanity about flattery, and debated with Carnegie the inclusion of “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency [36- 51].