July 27 Tuesday – The New York Times, p.6, ran a humorous story of Mark Twain and a swindle by a plumber.

DOCTOR, PLUMBER, AND TWAIN.

Hartford Letter to the Boston Saturday Globe.

By the way, I must tell you a story of a contretemps which proved a rather serious joke to that arch jester, Mark Twain. It has never been put into print, I think, but comes from the best authority to me. Every one has heard of that house on Farmington-avenue, in Hartford, which is so peculiar and picturesque that tourists go to see it aside from the interest attaching to the home of an American author. It is called a combination of Mark Twain and Queen Anne architecture, and is a most attractive and comfortable domicile. Some years ago, when Mr. Clemens was absent for several months from home, Mrs. Clemens, who is a lady of quiet tastes and a devoted mother, thought she perceived that her little girls were ailing. Filled with quick alarm, she sent for the family physician, who, a prominent practitioner, had a large-sized bee in his bonnet, which was named “sewer gas.” He told the lady that her darlings were doubtless suffering from malarial troubles, induced by imperfect drainage, and that the plumbing of the house was probably defective or out of repair. She was much alarmed and in a sad quandary in her husband’s absence, the more so as she knew he had taken great pains to secure perfect sanitation in the household arrangements. Sending for a plumber, of course the rival of the man who had put in the pipes, she asked him to make an examination. The good man was horror-stricken at the condition in which he said he found things. He condemned the whole system, and was given the contract to tear out and replace the plumbing and make secure the safety of the inmates of the house. Of course the expense was enormous, but the doctor said it was justifiable, and the plumber was righteously indignant at the man who originally did the job. About the time the change was completed Clemens arrived home and the wife flew to his arms with an account of their narrow escape from illness and perhaps death. It was then that the funny man arose in his wrath, and the manner in which he cursed sewer gas, doctor, and plumber was said to have been an education in the comprehensive possibilities of the English language. The fact was, that in order to avoid possible danger, he had made his house to drain into the river that passes below his grounds, the pipes were not connected to any sewer, and the really fine work of the best plumber in town had been torn out and far poorer work put in, to ease the fond fears of a loving mother, carry out the whim of a too scientific physician, and add some $1,500 to the pile of a rapacious plumber.

Thomas W. Knox wrote to Sam from New York on Lotos Club stationery. Knox had “just called” on Edward H. House, who told him that “two or three weeks ago” Sam had likened Knox’s manner at the Club “to that of the bounding iceberg. Now, as I haven’t the shadow of the embryo of the smallest scintilla of a reason for the least decline of the thermometer towards you, your suspicions are baseless.” [MTP].