December 1 Friday – In New York on Players Club stationery, Sam wrote a short note to Charles Willey in Bay Shore, Long Island:

My Dear Sir: / I have great confidence in Huck Finn’s judgment in these matters; therefore I am quite willing that you should use the design [MTP].

Sam visited William Dean Howells in his N.Y. apartment but “had to leave there …because so many people came there was no satisfaction in the visit” [Dec. 2 to Livy].

In the evening Sam dined again with John Mackay and some men from the Pacific coast. He wrote of it to Livy on Dec. 2 (this dinner is sometimes confused with the Nov. 26-7 after-dinner gathering with Mackay and others that Sam wrote lasted till 1:30 a.m.):

Note: This letter is not in LLMT, but may be found in MTLP 2: 597. The MTP TS of this letter includes two paragraphs at the front of the letter Paine chose to omit. Paine often made choices that chagrin later scholars, so his collections must be read with care.

Last night [Dec. 1] at John Mackay’s [The Players] the dinner consisted of soup, raw oysters, corned beef and cabbage, & something like a custard. I ate without fear or stint, & yet have escaped all suggestion of indigestion. The men present were old gray Pacific-coasters whom I knew when I & they were young & not gray. The talk was of the days when we went gipsying a long time ago — thirty years. Indeed it was a talk of the dead. Mainly that. And of how they looked, & the harum-scarum things they did & said. For there were no cares in that life, no aches & pains, & not time enough in the day (& three-fourths of the night) to work off one’s surplus vigor & energy. Of the mid-night highway-robbery-joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the windswept & desolate Gold Hill Divide, no witness is left but me, the victim. All the friendly robbers are gone. These old fools last night laughed till they cried over the particulars of that old forgotten crime [MTP].

Note: Fatout reports this as the “Mackay Dinner” [MT Speaking 660], but Sam’s account shows it was not a singular event nor was his talk a prepared one, much like the Nov. 26-7 after-dinner talk. Of course Sam often selected from a host of anecdotes based on the audience and event.

The Brooklyn Eagle, p.2 reviewed the Dec. issue of Cosmopolitan, including Sam’s sketch:

Mark Twain lends his detailed and always fresh wit and humor to varying the monotony of travel to the fair [Chicago Exposition which Sam did not attend due to illness], in “Traveling With a Reformer.”

William Dean Howells wrote to Sam about Sunday’s dinner engagement:

Dear Clemens: / I said to Mrs. Howells just now, “I suppose Clemens wouldn’t dream of coming in a dress coat Sunday?” “Well, he might,” she said, and so I write to say, Don’t!

— The mischief seemed to be in it, today. We live whole weeks without a soul coming near, but if you happen to drop in, a regiment follows. Yours Ever [MTHL 2: 656]

Sons & Daughters of the Am. Revolution sent Sam a printed invitation to meet Professor and Mrs. John Fiske, Mrs. Stoughton, and Miss Fiske, Dec. 16 from 2 to 5 p.m. Hotel Netherland, N.Y. [MTP].