November 8 Wednesday – Election day – Sam telegraphed Howells that he’d “love to steal a while away from every cumbering care and while returns come in today lift up my voice & swear” [MTLE 1: 142]. Note: Sam parodied the first verse of a popular hymn by Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (1783-1861), one included in Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Collection of Hymns: “I love to steal, awhile, away / From every cumbering c
November 7 Tuesday – The day Clemens recalled Bret Harte “suddenly” appearing at his house “and remaining there during the following day” [AMT 2: 424]. However, Twichell’s journal shows Sam did not correctly recall the date, since Twichell and Harte visited the Clemenses on Sunday, Nov. 5 (see entry). Clemens also recalled the claim of Harte, that he did not wish to vote on election day as he’d obtain the promise of a consulship from both candidates, Samuel J.
November 6 Monday – Joe Twichell and Charles Warner were walking to the Tower and stopped at Sam’s to see if he’d like to go. From Twichell’s journal:
November 5 Sunday – Bret Harte attended services at Twichell’s Asylum Hill Congregational Church. From Twichell’s journal:
“After evening service went over with H. to M.T.’s and had a very pleasant hour with Bret Harte” [Yale 114].
November 4 Saturday – Moncure Conway wrote from London to Sam.
November 2 Thursday – Sam wrote a correspondence card of alarm from Hartford to Moncure Conway:
November 1 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Jacob H. Burrough, Sam’s St. Louis roommate at the Pavey’s in 1854, who had written about Will Bowen being remarried. Burrough had recently traveled through New York, and his letter to Sam recalled a young Sam Clemens. Sam responded:
October 28 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Ellen D. Conway, Moncure’s wife, apologizing for thinking he had answered her letter of two months before, but discovering that he had not. Ellen’s letter concerned the electrotypes, cost and disposition of which Sam had offered to absorb.
October 27 Friday – Sam dictated a letter from Hartford to John T. Raymond, who was in Toronto, Canada and who evidently had made objections to terms in their agreement to continue in his role of Col. Sellers in the play Gilded Age, which was eventually called Colonel Sellers. Sam wrote that he had supposed they might meet but he was going to Europe “for a year or two” with his family in April.
October 26 Thursday – Sam wrote to William Cullen Bryant. This is another letter soliciting feedback on one George Vaughan, a Virginia writer who authored Progressive Religious and Social Poems (see Oct. 25, 1875 to the editor of the Hartford Courant). Vaughan professed to be engaged in establishing a normal school for colored people in Virginia and that many prominent people, Bryant among them, had contributed to his fund.