November 28 Friday – Sam wrote on board the train from Washington to Livy [MTP]:

We dined & stayed all night with Tom Nast & family, & had a most noble good time. I occupied his eldest daughter’s room—Miss Julia Nast, aged about 20—the most remarkable room I was ever in—a curious & inexhaustible museum. Not an inch of the four walls could be seen—all hidden under pictures, photographs, etchings, photographs, Christmas cards, menus, fans, statuettes, trinkets & knick-knacks in all metals—little brackets everywhere, with all imaginable dainty & pretty things massed upon them & hanging from them—the most astounding variety of inexpensive & interesting trifles that was ever huddled together upon four walls in this world .

Sam and Cable gave a reading in Academy of Music, Baltimore, Maryland. While Sam was on stage, George Cable wrote his wife, Lucy:

“I am again in the retiring room. Mark is making the house roar as only a Southern audience can. It is an immense house too, although the rain has poured all day long” [Turner, MT & GWC 63].

Charles Webster caught an obscene defacement on page 283 of Huck Finn after 250 copies had gone out. He blew the whistle and contacted the press (see Nov. 29 entry, also Nov 20.)

Charles Webster wrote to Clemens that Col. Fred Grant “writes that he will see you on the subject of his father’s new book at any time” and that he’d showed Sam’s letter to his father [MTP].