October 30 Friday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Margery H. Clinton.
Dear Miss Margery: / Good, you’re coming! Well, I am glad. Even dern glad, as Pontius Pilate used to say. I think it was Pontius; at any rate it was the one that wrote Paradise Lost & was eventually burned by the Church for falling down the mountain & breaking the tables of stone. I never cared for him, although an ancestor. He ought to have known he was in no condition to carry things down a mountain & everybody looking at him. / With love & thanks … [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Dorothy Harvey.
Dear Dorothy, you have been 14 so long now, that it no longer seems strange & bizarre & impossible & unthinkable, but has settled down into a calm & logical & to-be-expected & uninflammable fact. It is very odd, to watch 14 & see it perform; see it appear a vague speck on the horizon; see it get larger & a little larger & a little larger, & nearer & nearer, & then suddenly swell up & occupy all space for an instant & go crashing & thrashing & thundering by; & the very next moment there’s nothing in sight but some whirling leaves & dust—& lo & behold you are 14! In 5 minutes that dust settles down, & you realize that you don’t really feel any more different than you did before. You have been 14 exactly a week, now, Oct. 30, & already you are perfectly used to it. It is like being a mother a week: feels as if one had always been a mother. I remember it very well.
I am feeling better this morning, & the physicians & the nurses think there is hope. The most alarming difficulty was that I could get no sleep, during the whole of four consecutive nights and days. It was on account of my Cabinet. I felt that if I should be elected, I ought to be able to name my Cabinet at once, so that they could go to practising & be competent for work as soon as confirmed. I decided upon your father for Secretary of State; Mr Duneka for Public Printer & Major Leigh for Librarian of Congress: but in trying to select the right people for the right places, I lost my sleep & my mind, & those places are vacant yet.
This may all be premature, I know that. There is not the slightest likelihood that I shall be elected, yet experience has long ago taught me that it is always best to look sharply out for the unexpected & be prepared for it, because that is the thing that happens—not the other thing. It logically follows, then, that it is the most unexpected thing that happens. Very well, you will see that I will have this Cabinet all coopered and ready.
I had a most lovely time down then. I wish I could have these free- gratis-for-nothing-voyages- &-nothing-to-do-but-look-at-you every day. I should grow fat and satisfactory.
France has 207,000 sq. m.; Oregon, 194,000; Texas, 265,000, & each of them farming 2000 a year. The picayune was a silver coin worth 6 ¼ cents in America & 3 in England & its origin was Spanish. I know some other things besides these, but these are the bulk of my education.
Will you ask your father if he thinks Howells would do for War?
Very lovingly / S.L.C.
P. S. I am ever so glad the pin pleases you; for, selecting pins is pure guesswork with me & can easily result clumsily [MTP].
William Dean Howells wrote from Hotel Bellevue, Boston, to Sam.
“Hello! Hello! That you. Clemens? Well, this is Howells.”
(From a one-legged Dialogue between two Deans of American Literature.)
I would like to come to you at once; I left just such another landscape at Kittery Point last Saturday; but I shall not look from your windows before the snow flies. Pilla and I are here seeing Mrs. Howells through a course of teething which began last winter and has kept her in misery ever since. We expect it to be over next week, and then, after I have settled her in a New York hotel, provisionally, while our flat is furnishing, I can begin to talk.
Of course you have thought of the right thing in copyright, and I wish I knew what it was. I have long dimly thought that what we wanted was not copyright law but law. Is it something like that? But you have my assent, anyway. I can take it back, I suppose.
Think of our being in New York together three weeks ago! But I can’t think of it. Yours ever / W.D. Howells [MTHL 2: 836-7]. Note: see n1 source: Howells had been in NY at the end of Sept. Clemens had been in NY on Sept. 25 to see daughter Jean off for Berlin.
Charles Gilman Norris wrote from Toronto, Canada to ask for a copy of “What is Man?” and enclosing his letter to David Grayson, “author of delightful articles…in the ‘American’ Magazine’” and to whom he wished to give the copy [MTP].
Pearson’s Weekly, London wrote asking for a “contribution” for their Christmas Number [MTP].
Erin Hill wrote from NYC to invite Clemens to read at the City History Club’s conference and bazaar at the Hotel Plaza on Nov. 13-14 [MTP].
Herman Stalberg wrote from Hartsdale, NY to Sam. “God bless you, and a thousand thanks for that portrait!” [MTP].
YMCA per W.G. Cartlich wrote to try and “secure you for a lecture in Minneapolis sometime during the winter” [MTP]. Note: “Ans. Nov. 3 MLH”