May 6 Friday – Sam sent a dispatch from Elmira to Elisha Bliss, confirming receipt of a royalty check for $3,914.62 [MTL 4: 126]. Innocents had sold 60,378 copies, with total royalties to Sam in the amount of $11,300 [127n1].
May 5 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Elisha Bliss, advising him he would be home in a week (Buffalo) and asking what happened to a paragraph (what Sam thought about himself) in the New York Sun [MTL 4: 125].
May 4 Wednesday – Sam wrote a note of thanks to a fan, Mary Janney [MTL 4: 124].
May 2 Monday – In Buffalo, Sam wrote a short note to James Redpath about lecturing in Cambridge, New York:
Dear Redpath, / I mislaid the letter enquiring about Cambridge, N.Y., till this moment. It got mixed with my loose papers.
May 1 Sunday – Sam and Livy left Buffalo and arrived in Elmira. The Elmira Reporter announced that Jervis had returned from the south, and that Sam and Livy were in town. Jervis, knowing his time was short, officially restructured his company to include his son Charles J. Langdon, Theodore W. Crane, and John D.
May – After reaching an agreement with the Galaxy on payment and copyright, Sam’s first articles for “Memorandum” were published in the May issue.
April 30 Saturday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Charles C. Converse, an attorney and son of a prominent Elmira music teacher, about a wrongful characterization of Rev. Thomas De Witt Talmage, (1832-1902) pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, in the May “Memoranda” of the Galaxy. Sam patched things up [MTL 4: 123].
April 29 Friday – In Springfield, New York? Sam telegraphed to Elisha Bliss:
“Send check & quarterly statement to me at Elmira Saml L. Clemens” [MTP, drop-in letters].
April 28 Thursday – Not any better and 30 pounds thinner, Jervis Langdon arrived back in Elmira with his wife. His problem was not the simple “dyspepsia” the doctors had thought, but cancer [MTL 4: 124-5n1].
April 26 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Frank Fuller, who was trying to sell Sam more insurance. Sam mentioned what was to be a small tempest with “John Quill” (Charles Heber Clark 1841-1915) about the ending to a story Quill claimed was his. (In “The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper,” a boy is blown up with nitro-glycerin) [MTL 4: 119-122].