November 28 Monday – In Montreal, Sam wrote a short note and a long PS to Livy [MTLP 407].

Livy darling, you and Clara [Spaulding] ought to have been at breakfast in the great dining room this morning. English female faces, distinctive English costumes, strange and marvelous English gaits—& yet such honest, honorable, clean-souled countenances, just as these English women almost always have, you know. Right away—

But they've come to take me to the top of Mount Royal, it being a cold, dry, sunny, magnificent day. Going in a sleigh. Yours lovingly, SAML.

He also included a newspaper clipping for Susy and Clara Clemens to read, “’Mark Twain’ in Montreal—A chat with the American Humorist” [MTP].

Sam also wrote to James R. Osgood about putting a price on a Canadian run of 275 copies of P&P. He and Osgood were still trying to outsmart the pirates. Sam asked Osgood to telegraph Samuel Dawson, the printer and bookseller they were using in Montreal [MTLTP 146].

From Sam’s notebook:

“Mild yesterday & sifted snow all day. This morning it is mighty cold, with yesterday’s one inch of snow crunching & grinding under the cart wheels in a shrill metallic way.”

Sam observed that the weather predictions of Henry George Vennor, the Canadian naturalist, were pretty accurate. He wrote that it was 4 degrees below zero Monday night and 15 below in Quebec. Sam visited Vennor at his home in Montreal sometime during his stay [MTNJ 2: 407n172, 411].

The Montreal Gazette ran an article on page 3 titled “An Innocent Abroad,” Sam’s comments on his lectures and on lecturing; reminiscences about the legislature in the Sandwich Islands [Budd, “Interviews” 2].