February 15 Monday – Sam gave his second presentation for the Hartford Monday Evening Club on “Universal Suffrage.” For a portion of the text see MTB p.541 [Monday Evening Club; Fatout, MT Speaking 651].
Maj. General John Gibbon (1827-1896) wrote from Ft. Shaw, Montana to praise GA as “amusing and interesting, but exceedingly instructive” [MTP].
Robert Watt wrote from Copenhagen, Denmark.
My dear Mr Clemens! / I received your kind, interesting and long letter of the 26st January a few days ago, and thank you very much. It is realy very amiable on your part to write at such a length considering how very much you have got to do, and how sick and tired you sometimes must be of pen and ink.
Jorgensen got your letter and called on me to let me read it, to him you enclosed a photograph of your new town house—so I had got none, but now, since you also send me one, I shan’t quarrel with him. What a fine place it must be! and I shan’t very easily give up the hope of having the pleasure of calling on you there, to have a chat under the trees. I am always travelling about, but it will be more difficult to get Mr Jorgensen across; still he thanks you very much for your kind proposal, and I am sure I am not less grateful myself. Allow me to congratulate you to the new baby!— How many now?— Have you been married for several years?— Yes! There is lots of questions I should wish to put, if I was not afraid of bothering you. But à propos. Is there not a real good biography of you to be had? Of course I can learn very much concerning your life from your books, but still I should like to have the other thing too; and might put it together with your portrait in the new danish edition of your works. Jorgensen tells me that the two volumes of Mark Twain “soon will be sold entirely out, and I shall then commence a good and elegant edition of Selected works” in at least 5 volumes, commencing with “Roughing it” or perhaps “Old times on the Mississippi”—and “to be continued”. I thank you beforehand for the last named book; I have already enjoyed the two first chapters as Mr Christensen in New York at once sent me “The Atlantic”; he knows I am watching everything that flows from your pen to swallow it on the spot. The other day too, I happened to get hold of the illustrated edition of your “Roughing it” dedicated to Mr Higbie (American Publishing Co) I got it from a countryman who had been 23 years away from Denmark and who had spent several years in Nevada, where he still holds property. The book amused me very much, and so it did to get a talk with him, particularly because he had often seen you in Virginia City when you lived there. … [MTPO]. Note: answered on Mar. 8.