June 10 Sunday – An interview dated June 9 ran on page 1 of the New York Times: “MR. MARK TWAIN EXCITED ON SEEING THE NAME OF CAPT. C.C. DUNCAN IN PRINT”.

With his strawberries and cream before him and his NEW-YORK TIMES in his hand, Mark Twain sat upon the portico of his handsome home this morning and made merry. He had chanced upon an item concerning an old acquaintance, Capt. C.C. Duncan, New-York’s Shipping Commissioner and the father of three illustrious young men whose powers of absorbing the funds of the United States Government are, as far as is now known, illimitable. “Well, well, well! So the old man’s in hot water,” says the author of “Roughing It” and “Tom Sawyer,” with a mock expression of pity on his face as he pushed aside his strawberries. “Poor devil! I should think that after a while he’d conclude to put a little genius into his rascality, and try to hoodwink the public as his little game of robbery goes on. It don’t become a scoundrel to be an ass. The combination always makes a mix of things, and if Duncan will persist in his wicked ways somebody ought to have a guardian appointed for him…

The “interview” caused a furor; Duncan threatened suit; Sam, denied “all but 20 words” of it; the rest he called the “reporter’s own invention.”

June 10–14 Thursday – Sometime between these dates Sam telegraphed from Hartford to Webster about the Duncan article in the Times.

“SAY NOTHING TO ANYBODY UNTIL YOU HEAR FROM ME AGAIN. YOU DID NOT SEND ME THAT PAPER CONTAINING INTERVIEW. I MUST SEE THAT BEFORE I CAN KNOW HOW TO PROCEED. LET ME KNOW, AS SOON AS DUNCAN ACTUALLY SUES ME—A THING I AM NOT EXPECTING TO HAPPEN—S L C” [MTBus 215].