May 31 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Webster advising him on the stock price of American Bank Note Co. Howells had informed Sam that a broker named Shepard could get the stock cheaper than Bissell, the Hartford broker Sam usually dealt with. Sam authorized Webster to buy $1000 worth. Samuel Webster observes: “Apparently Mark Twain’s only reason for choosing this investment was to get a little printing business” [MTBus 159].

Sam also wrote to an unidentified woman about the ”notorious Diamond-King hoax” saying he had “never told a ‘magnificent lie’ that cost anybody pain or a postage stamp” [MTP]. Note: The diamond hoax of 1872 was caused by two men salting diamonds in a Wyoming mine field and gathered such investors as Horace Greeley and Charles Tiffany before it was exposed by Clarence King, a U.S. Government geologist.