November 3 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Sarah Knowles Bolton:

Please keep the enclosed private, & do not let any one see it — for the reason that it has not been published yet; it will appear on Christmas day in a syndicate of 50 newspapers.

This proof-sheet came yesterday after you were gone. It may possibly be of some use to you. I will confess to you that I am very much vainer of this reform-invention of mine than I am of anything else I have ever done. It isn’t every reform-system that can stand innumerable tests during 17 years & come out winner every time [MTP].

Note: Bolton was writing Famous American Authors (1887); the “reform-system” and the proof-sheet referred to an unpublished piece written and revised during this fall, “Concerning a Reformed Pledge: A New-Year Sermon.” Sam had disdain for most pledges of reform, stemming from his boyhood days in Hannibal. It is likely Bolton was interested in his current writing as well as biographical information.

Irving Bacheller promised wide publication on Christmas day through his newspaper syndicate, but Bacheller would finally reject the piece [MTNJ 3: 264n127]. The note here quoted explains:

“Nevertheless, its excessive length as well as its general banality, evident in Clemens’ humorless insistence that one could ‘tire out’ an unhealthy desire by thinking of something else ‘& then it will not come back any more,’ apparently caused its rejection by Bacheller and others.” Note: these last two words imply that Sam tried to get the piece published elsewhere. In his notebook for early 1887, Sam made reference to “L” and “What went with my sermon?” meaning he’d tried Laffan of the N.Y. Sun after being rejected by Bacheller [MTNJ 3: 275&n164].

And, this from MTNJ 3: 254n89:

“Mark Twain hoped ‘to make as strong and earnest a protest as I can against pledges to cease from bad habits, & pledges to never begin bad habits,” arguing that such pledges were necessarily ineffective because of one’s ‘dumb yearning to shake himself free of his shackles & be a man again.’ The fragmentary notes in the following entry were for a discussion of curing profanity in the same piece.”

Also, in Sam’s notebook is an entry that further clarifies the 17-year figure:

17 years practice

I know that assaulting so small a trouble with so large a remedy to so apparently small a trouble was rather like hunting cats with artillery, but I will explain that my colds in the head were not of the regulation size; they were a kind of cyclone, & they blew ten days; they left nothing behind but wreckage & devastation. Moderate remedies had no effect on them [MTNJ 3: 255&n92].

In the evening, Sam again took a train to New York, and checked into the Murray Hill Hotel [Nov. 4 to Miss Samuel]. Sam may have made this trip for the signing of the contract with General Sheridan.

Charles J. Langdon sent Livy a statement of her account holding $2,672.10 [MTP]. Note: date corrected from Nov. 30.