September 17 Friday – Sam wrote from Elmira to James Ausburn Towner (1836-1909) (“Ishmael”), somewhat piqued at Towner’s column in the Sept. 11 Elmira Saturday Evening Revue [MTL 3: 352].
September 13 Monday – “The Gates Ajar,” attributed to Sam, was printed in the Express [McCullough 51].
Sam left Elmira for Buffalo.
September 11 Saturday – “The Last Words of Great Men,” and “Personal,” both signed by Sam ran in the Express. In the former piece, Sam claimed that the last words of Joan of Arc were “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching.” Other pieces ran in the Express: “Mr. And Mrs.
September 10 Friday – Sam’s letter to Livy of Sept. 8 shows he proposed to start for Elmira “Friday night at 11—& start back at same hour on Monday night.”
September 9 Thursday – “Butler on the Byron Scandal,” attributed to Sam, ran in the Express [McCullough 38].
Sam finished the letter to Livy, begun the previous day. He wrote about Feb. 4 being the wedding date (it turned out to be Feb. 2,) his writing to Redpath of that fact, and about Charles Langdon, who had left for a trip around the world [MTL 3: 348-9].
September 8 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Henry M. Crane about lecturing:
“No, your ‘persistence’ don’t annoy me a bit—it is complimentary to me. I am only going to lecture till the middle of January, anyhow.”
Sam noted that his wedding had been postponed until the first week in February, due to lecture dates he was unable to cancel. Sam’s intention at this point was to “get out of the lecture-field forever” [MTL 3: 346-7].
September 7 Tuesday – Another article attributed to Sam ran in the Express: “More Byron Scandal.”
“The aching desire that some people have for notoriety, to be talked about, even to be cursed rather than not to be noticed at all, can be the only possible excuse that I can imagine for this woman to lug into view family secrets in which the world can find nothing but the nastiest interest” [McCullough 37].
September 6 Monday – Sam wrote from Buffalo (“In Bed Monday Night”) to Livy about a flap over poetry/song with George W. Elliott, who Sam referred to as the “Dead Canary.”
“[The] Cincinnati, Toledo & other western papers speak as highly of the book as do the New York & Philadelphia papers” [MTL 3: 335-7].
September 4 Saturday – Sam’s story of comic mayhem, “Journalism in Tennessee,” was printed in the Express. It was about Mark Twain taking a journalism job in Tennessee as associate editor of the Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop and being shot at so much he decided frontier journalism wasn’t for him [Wilson 37]. A second article by the same name, “The Byron Scandal,” and a follow up article, “The Byron Question” are attributed to Sam [McCullough 28-30].
September 3 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss about the New York Herald’s favorable notice for his book. The review argued that it was not too irreverent, a criticism some reviewers made [MTL 3: 329].
Sam also wrote to Henry Crane, who had kept requesting Sam to lecture, and to Livy.