April 3 Saturday – Sam and Joe Twichell traveled to New York City and on to West Point.
Sam read at the Military Academy, West Point, New York. See Leon, p 158-95 for “The Awful German Language,” “An American Party,” and “Jumping Frog” segments Sam used. Leon includes several accounts of Sam’s time at the Point (p 67-9) including a dispatch by a correspondent to the Army and Navy Journal dated Apr. 7 and printed Apr. 10:
Everyone on the post who could possibly do so went to the mess hall last Saturday evening to hear Mark Twain. The platform for the speaker was on the side of the hall, and the seats for the listeners were arranged in a semi-circle. The cadets were evidently in good humor, for when the head waiter of the mess went on the platform to arrange the table, he was greeted with tumultuous applause, which caused a number of officers who were in the mess parlor to hurry into the room, thinking that the lecture had begun.
When Mr. Clemens entered the hall at 8 o’clock he was warmly greeted. He was escorted to the platform by Prof. Postlethwaite and Lieut. O.J. Brown. After music the lecture was introduced and gave a selection from Huckleberry Finn, illustrating Huck’s interview with the escaped slave regarding the wisdom of Solomon [chapter 14]. The chapter on German Genders was very funny. Meeting an American girl in a foreign restaurant [“An American Party”] and Cure for Stammering were next given. The evening’s entertainment was ended with the Jumping Frog. The good hits were all generously and vigorously applauded, and it is safe to say that no lecturer ever had a more appreciative audience.
From Twichell’s journal:
…read in the evening in the Mess Hall to the Cadets and general garrison for an hour-and-a-half with as great success as on the occasion of our previous visit [Feb. 28, 1881] [Yale, copy at MTP].
From one cadet’s account:
He read from Huckleberry Finn in the mess hall, and I think not only the entire corps but all the officers and their families were present. Prof. Postlethwaite, our Chaplain, presided, and we never before had seen this dignified Chaplain lose complete control of himself, just as the whole audience did in its outbursts of laughter…Literally, my sides were so lame from laughter that I did not get over the pain of it for several days…[Leon 67-8].
From Leon:
“This visit of 3 April 1886 is noteworthy for another reason. Charles Swift Riché (USMA 1886) recalled in “A Brief History of the Class” that Mark Twain, as usual, visited informally in the barracks after his address in the mess hall. …He entertained cadets in the room of a fellow Missourian, Cadet First Captain John J. Pershing (1860-1948) [69].” Note: “Blackjack” Pershing led the A.E.F forces in WWI, including this editor’s grandfather. (Editorial emphasis.)
Sam and Joe Twichell spent the night at West Point.
The London Pall Mall Gazette on page five ran “GOOD ADVICE FROM MARK TWAIN,” which contained Sam’s 1870 essay, “A General Reply,” which had run in the Galaxy and the Buffalo Express. It was testament to Sam’s universal fame by this time that such pieces would be printed again. Perhaps the introduction to the article says it best:
Mark Twain is so universally known as a humorist that it is only very few who know that upon certain subjects, such as the Sandwich Islands and the Mississippi, the genial American is also a serious authority. But even among his distinctively humorous writings, here and there will be found as much good solid sense as in any works professedly written to educate and not to amuse.
Bradley & Hubbard Mfg. Co. of Meridian, Conn. wrote to Sam about being stuck for some 60 Grant busts left over from the 100 ordered by William N. Woodruff with Karl Gerhardt. The letter states that Woodruff represented that Webster & Co. Would pay for the bronzes. Upon being ignored by the company, he wrote to Sam [MTP]. Note: Woodruff was a machinist at Pratt & Whitney, responsible for the terra cotta busts of Grant, who evidently also ordered them in metal.