November 15 Friday – Sam and Livy made a trip to New York, where Sam was to speak [MTHL 2: 621n3]. This is the day Fred Hall reported on Nov. 11 that complete sheets would have been printed for CY, so it’s likely Sam stopped by Webster & Co.

In the evening Sam gave a dinner speech at the Fellowcraft Club, New York City. Fatout prefaces a copy of the speech in Mark Twain Speaking, p.247-50:

“In a dictation of August 28, 1906, MTP, Mark Twain says that at a dinner of the Fellowcraft Club, an organization of magazine writers and illustrators, he induced Major Pond to ask the chairman, Gilder, to recognize an unscheduled speaker who had a foolproof scheme for teaching novices how to make speeches without preparation. Gilder reluctantly consented, and the interloper was announced as Mr. Samuel Langhorne, the audience shouting its disapproval of this gross violation of banqueting etiquette. When Mark Twain arose, he was immediately recognized and cheered, everybody relieved because they thought he was to speak in place of the unknown Langhorne.”

Livy lost a diamond on this trip according to Sam’s Nov. 22 to Susan Crane.

Frederick J. Hall wrote Sam of needing $3,000 for “a short time,” to meet printing and composition costs for CY and the Conkling book and Vol. X of LAL and of having $7,408.65 due from agents within the next 90 days [MTP].

Orion Clemens wrote to Sam that a “postal from Pamela…announced her arrival at Oakland.” “Ma is well but full of hallucinations And, “I was glad to learn from your favor of the 8th that you feel satisfied.” Sam rarely annotated Orion’s letters, but on the envelope wrote, “Orion’s dream about the baby — Valuable / Nov. 1889” [MTP].