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].
March 7 Monday – Sam’s brief disclaimer of a rumor that he was about to leave Buffalo was printed in the Express, daily from this day through Mar. 11. “I am a permanency here” [MTL 4: 89].
March 6 Sunday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Robert and Louise Howland (b. 1848?) with a note to James Warren Nye. Howland was a former mining buddy and partner of Sam’s in 1861. Nye was the former governor of Nevada and now Senator.
March 4 Friday – In Buffalo Sam replied to Lewis Frank Walden (whose letter not extant) explaining why he wasn’t lecturing:
“I was married a month ago & so have cast away the blue goggles of bachelordom & now look at the world through the crystal lenses of my new estate” [MTL 4: 86].
March 3 Thursday – Sam and Livy (in shaded text) finished their letter to Jervis Langdon.
Your two letters came this morning, father, & your dispatch yesterday afternoon. (Mem.—Ellen’s in the stable & the horse in the attic looking at the scenery.)
March 2 Wednesday – The Clemenses invited George H. Selkirk and wife Emily over for the evening. Selkirk was one of Sam’s Express partners [Reigstad 133].
Jervis Langdon replied to the Feb. 26 from Sam:
Dear Samuel,
March – Between March 1870 and March 1871 – Sam wrote 87 pieces for the New York Galaxy [Wilson 109]. He was offered two and a half times the normal rate for a regular humorous section in the magazine. He agreed only if the label of humor was not applied to his work. He thus wrote under a column titled, “Memoranda,” and his first article was published in May.
Livy’s cousin, Anna Marsh Brown stayed with the Clemenses “briefly” [Reigstad 134].