August 24 Tuesday – Thomas W. Higginson wrote inviting the Clemenses to a reading he was giving from his old journals “describing Newport society during the Revolution, especially while the French officers” were there [MTL 6: 522].
During their Newport stay Sam and Higginson used an old bowling alley. In 1907 Sam recalled the fun:
It was a single alley, and it was estimated that it had been out of repair for sixty years….The surface of that alley consisted of a rolling stretch of elevations and depressions, and neither of us could by any art known to us persuade a ball to stay on the alley until it should accomplish something….We examined the alley, noted and located a lot of its peculiarities, and little by little we learned how to deliver a ball in such a way that it would travel home and knock down a pin or two [MTL 6: 522]. Note: This was not the first time Sam played tenpins. See The Twainian, Mar-Apr 1956, p. 3-4 for an account of a game between Sam and Steve Gillis sometime during their San Francisco days.
Sam wrote to his brother Orion:
My Dear Bro: / Please write this lady & remind her that you are the person she should appeal to, & not me; & do try to make her comprehend that my hands are entirely full with efforts to assist people who have done me favors in bygone days. / Yr Bro / Sam [MTP Drop-in letters].
August 24 or 25? Wednesday – Sam had received the Aug. 23 from John T. Raymond asking for five percent agent fee, since he’d foregone using an agent for the upcoming season. Raymond has also used his wife for the part of Laura, and claimed she had made an “unqualified hit,” inviting Sam to come see the play.
Since Raymond was taking it upon himself to contract theater rental and supporting cast, Sam wrote from Newport to his attorney, Charles E. Perkins, enclosing the play bookings for the upcoming season and asking if it would be better to have copies of all of Raymond’s contracts. Sam was leery of being “Blissed.”
Sam also telegraphed H.W. Bergen, his agent, to forward all of Raymond’s contracts [MTL 6: 525-8]. Sam had hired Bergen once the Gilded Age play toured the country. Duckett explains Bergen’s duties:
“When the play went on tour, he [Sam] hired an agent to follow the company, count the gate receipts, and see to it that the author’s share was duly paid. The agent was to report every day by postcard the amount of Twain’s half of the intake, and when these cards arrived at the Hartford house at dinnertime, Mark read aloud the figures and pranced around the table waving the cards in triumph” [122].