March 26 Saturday – In the morning Sam looked out his master bedroom window and saw flames on the roof of 455 Delaware Street. He and Patrick McAleer (1846-1906), his coachman for many years, raced to help. McAleer rang fire-alarm box 62 at the corner of Virginia and Delaware. Reigstad writes:
March 22 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to James Redpath, his lecture circuit agent.
“Dear Red: I am not going to lecture any more forever. I have got things ciphered down to a fraction now. I know just about what it will cost us to live & I can make the money without lecturing. Therefore old man, count me out” [MTL 4: 94].
March 21 Monday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to James T. Fields, senior partner in Fields, Osgood & Co., a prestigious Boston publishing company. Fields preceded William Dean Howells as editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
March 19 Saturday – Sam’s article, “A Mysterious Visit,” a delightful spoof on income taxes and deductions, was printed in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 166]. A second article attributed to Sam, “Literary Guide to Williams & Packard’s System of Penmanship,” also was printed in the Express [McCullough 170].
March 18 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Hattie Booth, an autograph seeker [MTL 4: 93].
March 16 Wednesday – Sam telegraphed an unidentified person, declining to lecture “during the present season” [MTL 4: 92].
March 15 Tuesday – Sam accepted an invitation from a Mr. Nicholls to read for the G.A.R. [MTL 4: 92]. Note: Reigstad credits Martha Gray (Mrs. David Gray) with persuading Twain to speak as part of the Grand Army of the Republic’s lecture series. Reigstad writes:
March 12 Saturday – Sam’s article, “A Big Thing,” was printed in the Buffalo Express. Commenting on an article from the Louisville Journal, Sam wrote:
How familiar that old gushing, tiresome bosh is!…I wish to ask the Louisville reporter the old familiar question, so common among reporters in the mines: “How many ‘feet’ did the doctor give you?” (“Feet are shares.) We always got “feet,” in Nevada, for whooping about a Nearly-Pure-Silver-National-Debt-Liquidator in this gushing way” [McCullough 166].
March 11 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Francis P. Church. Sam offered to edit the humorous department of the Galaxy for $2,000 a year if they’d release copyright back to him upon publication.
March 9 Wednesday – An article attributed to Sam, “More Wisdom,” was printed in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 159].