April 23 Saturday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss, acknowledging the quarterly statement for Innocents Abroad. Sam wrote that he planned to buy his mother “a beautiful home in a village [Fredonia, New York] near here—my sister paying the other five or six thousand.” Sam requested a copy of Innocents Abroad be sent to Bart Bowen’s widow, Sarah.
April 22 Friday – Sam & Livy wrote a short note from Buffalo to Theodore W. Crane (1831-1889), their brother-in-law about receipt of a check (from money Jervis was holding for Sam) and miscellaneous matters [MTL 4: 116-7].
April 21 Thursday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Orion. Jane Clemens, their mother, arrived to visit Sam & Livy and would stay until May 23 [MTL 4: 115n2].
April 19? Tuesday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Orion Clemens. Sam had washed his hands of the Tennessee Land several times, and the property had caused a rift between him and Orion.
“As for the land, sell it at once & forever, if that Pittsburgh man sticks to his word. $50,000 is all it is worth, maybe” [MTL 4: 113].
April 16 Saturday – Livy & Sam wrote from Buffalo to Susan L. Crane, Livy’s adopted sister. They’d received a letter from Jervis who was in Richmond, Va., and moving further South to Charleston and Savannah for his growing illness. Most of the letter is by Livy, but Sam intruded with:
April 15 Friday – Livy fired Harriet the maid. Sam wrote on Apr. 16: “I had rather discharge a perilous & unsound cannon than the soundest servant girl that ever was” [MTL 4: 110].
Sam received a letter (not extant) from Thomas A. Kennett asking if Sam might pay something now. The first payment on purchase of the Express wasn’t till August [Apr. 16 to Jervis Langdon].
April 14 Thursday – Sam loaned Josephus Larned, his partner on the Express, $3,000 for one year against his interest in the newspaper. Bowen & Rogers attorneys drew the papers and John Slee advised Sam.
April 13 Wednesday – In Buffalo, Sam wrote to his brother Orion, who had asked if Sam could write him a letter of introduction to a Mr. Webster of the Republican [St. Louis?]. Sam could not remember the man. He also arranged to give Orion a credit at a St. Louis book dealer.
April 12 Tuesday – “Mark Twain on Agriculture” ran in the Buffalo Express.
(I can never touch the subject of Agriculture without getting excited. But you understand what I mean.) Under the head of “Memoranda” I shall take hold of this neglected topic, and by means of a series of farming and grazing articles of blood-curdling interest will proceed to lift the subject of Agriculture into the first rank of literary respectability [McCullough 176].
April 10 Sunday – In an exchange of pulpits, Rev. Thomas K. Beecher of Elmira Congregational Church came to Buffalo and preached at Grosvenor W. Heacock’s Lafayette Presbyterian Church. In his April 16 & 17 to Jervis and Olivia Lewis Langdon, Sam noted Beecher’s morning and evening sermons: “…the evening sermon, to a crowded house, was received with prodigious favor…” [MTL 4: 110; Reigstad 131-32].