April 4 Monday – Western Union Telegraph Co. bill of Apr. 30 shows telegram sent this date to New York, recipient not specified (see that entry for others).
H.N. Hinckley, Chicago publisher, wrote to Clemens, alerting him to a man selling reprints of Canadian pirated books of Mark Twain. Hinckley enclosed “an advert. [not in file] that has appeared in several of the Western Weeklies during the past two weeks.” He’d talked to Mr. Sprague and discovered a lot of piracy was going on from Canada due to a loophole in the law. “If your attorney can see any way of stopping the business here [I] should be pleased to cooperate with him” [MTP]. File note: “See James, TL to SLC 15 Apr 1881 40755 this letter attached to James.” See insert. G.H. Sprague advertising “A $3.50 book for 50c: Mark Twain’s Tramp Abroad, Innocents Abroad, etc.”
Saloman & De Leeuw, Hartford tobacconists wrote to advise Clemens they’d rec’d 300 of Seiderberg’s Key West cigars, which they now offered at $7.30 per 100 [MTP].
April 4 to 7 Thursday – Sam and Joe Twichell took a trip to Brooklyn to visit “dear Sage” [Dean Sage]. Twichell noted in his journal that he’d “Caught a bad cold…” [Yale, copy at MTP].