June 26 Wednesday – Sam spoke at the Yale Alumni Banquet in New Haven, Conn.

Ever since Yale promoted me to a place among its learned honoraries I have felt it a duty to scrutinize things more searchingly than I used to in order to apply my new acquirements to the uses of the university. So I bought a dictionary and resolved to do what I could to help the college along in science and everything I could [MTNJ 3:472n230 quoting the New Haven Daily Morning Journal and Courieri for June 27. [See also Hartford Courant of this day, “Yale’s Commencement,” p.1. which stated that “synopsis could do no justice to” his speech]

The New Haven Morning Journal and Courier, of June 27, p.2 reported that Sam:

…gave his opinions and observations upon the progress of medical science and its condition now in contrast to what it used to be [closing with the promise that] as long as he was permitted to appear with the faculty he would take especial pains to pick up all the science he could for the college [MTNJ 3: 473n230].

This is likely the date that Yale University student, F.W. Abell sold subscriptions of William Makepeace Thayer’s Marvels of the New West (1888) on the train to both Chauncey M. Depew and Sam Clemens.

This from Gribben:

“F.W. Abell, a student at Yale University in New Haven, wrote a letter to his employer, the Henry Bill Publishing Company of Norwich, Connecticut, on 1 July 1889: Abell described how he followed Chauncey M. Depew into a railroad car, sold him a copy of Marvels of the New West, and then recognized Clemens nearby.”

I sat on the foot stool before him, took out my prospectus, told him just what the work was, pointed to Chauncey Depew’s name and handed him the pen. He put his name right down. I then asked him to comment on the engravings that I might tell people how pleased he was with the work; but he was trying to drink some wine, and said in his slow, droll way, “you tell people what I thought about it” [Gribben 698-9; ALS in collection of Vandaeles Mabrito, Berkeley, Calif., copy in MTP].

Webster & Co. wrote to Sam, noting that Mr. Alfred R. Conkling had given an interview in “last night’s Mail and Express,” against their directive not to give any such. Also they noted that Andrew Carnegie was writing his autobiography, and that since his Triumphant Democracy had sold well they thought they might be able to sell six or eight thousand copies of his new work. Also Don Cameron was dying and they might be able to sell five or six thousand copies of an edition of his life in the State of Penn. [MTP]. Note: This would have been Simon Cameron (1799-1889), longtime Pennsylvania politician and senator who served one year as Lincoln’s Secretary of War, and who died this very day. His son was J. Donald Cameron (1833-1918), Secretary of War under Grant.