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.
September 2 Thursday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss about securing agents in the Buffalo area for sales of Innocents Abroad. All sales were by subscription, with traveling agents advertising and soliciting the book [MTL 3: 327]. Sam sent a note of acknowledgement to Stephen C.
September 1 Wednesday – Sam’s article “The Prodigal Son Returns” appeared in the Express [McCullough 28]. Sam wrote from Buffalo to Alphonso Miner Griswold (1834-1891), who wrote under the pen name, “Fat Contributor,” of his desire to get out of all lectures for this season. Griswold was reviewed as a “colorless copy of Mark Twain” [MTL 3: 324]. Sam also wrote to Livy.
August 28 Saturday – Sam’s article “English Festivities. And Minor Matters. Fishing” appeared in the Express [McCullough 23].
August 27 Friday – Whitelaw Reid of the New York Tribune published the first review of Innocents by a metropolitan daily, a positive and even-handed appraisal [MTL 3: 343n1; Powers, MT A Life 275]. Any good word from the Tribune was momentous and important to Sam.
August 26 Thursday – Sam finished a letter of Aug. 25 from Buffalo to Livy of his plans to be home in Elmira about 8 PM Friday. He enclosed notices of the Innocents Abroad [MTL 3: 322-3].
“Only a Nigger,” attributed to Sam, ran in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 22].
August 25 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Charles Warren Stoddard, poet and contributor to the San Francisco Overland Monthly. Stoddard became Sam’s personal secretary/companion in London in 1872.
Dear Charlie: / Thank you heartily for all your good wishes—& you must accept of mine in return. I have written Bret that we must have the “Overland”—see that he sends it, will you?
August 24 Tuesday – “The Byron Scandal,” attributed to Sam, ran in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 19].
From the Buffalo Express “People and Things Columns” by Mark Twain:
· The Blondes will expose themselves in Elmira to-night.
· Peach kernels contain hydrocyanic (or prussic) acid, and are dangerous nutriment. Fifteen hundred of them taken on an empty stomach will kill a man.