March 19 Monday – Susy Clemens’ sixteenth birthday.

In Washington, D.C. at the Congregational Church, Sam joined the Authors’ Reading in the cause of international copyright [Fatout, MT Speaking 658]. Edmund Clarence Stedman presided. The Washington Post, Mar. 20 p.3. “Local Intelligence” reported that he read, “Encounter with an Interviewer.” (This piece, a self-interview, first appeared in Lotos Leaves in the fall of 1874, and in 1878 collected in Punch, Brothers, Punch! It was thereafter sometimes included in Sam’s platform performances.)

In his Autobiography, Sam recollected the event:

At the reading in Washington in the spring of ’88 there was a crowd of readers. They all came overloaded, as usual. Thomas Nelson Page read forty minutes by the watch, and he was no further down than the middle of the list. We were all due at the White House at half past nine. The President and Mrs. Cleveland were present, and at half past ten they had to go away — the President to attend to some official business which had been arranged to be considered after our White House reception, it being supposed by Mr. Cleveland, who was inexperienced in Authors’ Readings, that our reception at the White House would be over by half past eleven, whereas if he had known as much about Authors’ Readings as he knew about other kinds of statesmanship, he would have known that we were not likely to get through before time for early breakfast [MTA 2: 151].

Also on the program were Thomas Nelson Page, Richard Malcolm Johnston, H. C. Bunner, Frank R. Stockton, Charles Dudley Warner, James Whitcomb Riley, Edward Eggleston, Hjalmar Boyesen, and Thomas W. Knox. Fatout reports Sam got to the White House too late to see the President [MT Speaking 658]. Sam’s Autobiography [2: 152-4] tells the story of a White House reception and Sam handing Mrs. Cleveland a card Livy had put in his pocket, for her to sign. The card merely read, “He did not.” After some cajoling, she signed the card, thereupon Sam handed her Livy’s note, “Don’t wear your arctics in the White House.” If this scene did take place, it happened on another evening, at another reception. (See Mar. 22 to Frances F. Cleveland. Also N.Y. Times article of Mar. 24 reporting Sam still at Washington hearings, so there would have been time for another reception.) Note: MTNJ 3:503n74 gives this as the date Sam first met Mrs. Cleveland, the former Frances Folsom. Robert Underwood Johnson’s Remembered Yesterdays p.263-4 gives an account of the occasion. ‡ – See addenda for Livy’s arrival.

Andrew Chatto wrote to Sam (enclosed in Chatto to Dawson Mar. 19) about publishing Mark Twain’s Library of Humor [MTP].

F.A. McKay, Late with Union Adams, N.Y. billed $42 and paid: “12 dress shirts 3.50 ea 42.00; Made & forwarded by Adams Ex. Co. last week by request of Mr. Union Adams” [MTP].