December 25 Wednesday – Christmas – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam sent a telegram to Dorothy Quick, now at 63 8th Ave. “Merry Christmas and do not forget Friday” [MTP]. Note: the Friday engagement is not specified.

Sam also inscribed the verso of a photo of himself lying in bed to an unidentified person:

“Now that the horse-shoe is mounted as a pin, it has become useful as well as beautiful. Truly Yours, Mark Twain, Xmas, 1907” [MTP: City Book Auction catalogs, No. 355, 16 Nov. 1946, Item 103].  

December, last week – The estimated time of Elinor Glyn’s follow-up 90-minute visit with Clemens at his NY home. This estimate is based on Clemens’ Jan. 13 A.D. See Jan. 13 entry, which also includes Glyn’s description of the meeting, and Anthony Glyn’s Elinor Glyn: a Biography, p. 143-4 which states, “She stayed for an hour and a half and for most of the time they discussed Three Weeks, which he greatly admired, both in matter and in style.” Glyn here neglects Sam’s opinion that publishing such a book was a mistake—a fact that got duly noted in the Sept.

December 24 Tuesday – William Henry Bishop, American Consul in Palermo, Italy wrote a four-page typed letter to “My dear Mr. Autobiographer”:

      It is known that when one gets in front of most any kind of an Auto he is apt to be hurt, so I am not much surprised, after the impact of your current Autobiography (page 487 of the December number of the North American Review), to find myself a corpse.

December 23 Monday – Elmer Z. Burns wrote to Sam, enclosing a photograph of Twain’s cabin at Aurora. “Some of your admirers have placed decorations on this cabin in your honor, but I am sure, if all who would like to do so, could, the cabin would be buried beneath the load” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote for Sam on the letter, “The hillside & the sagebrush look just as they did before, but I think the house looks better than it did formerly”

December 22 Sunday – Sam gave a dinner speech at the Pleiades Club, Hotel Brevoort, which was literally next door to his house at 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Fatout introduces the event:  

At the Pleiades Club dinner for Mark Twain, menus were decorated with illustrated quotations from his books. Carter S. Cole, chairman, introduced the guest of honor by paying tribute to his eminence in American literature, praising so lavishly that Mark Twain began his speech with a mild protest [MT Speaking 600].

December 21 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean.  

December 20 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Frances Nunnally.

I suppose you are about to leave for home, dear Francesca, so I am hasting to wish you a happy holiday-time before you get away down there out of my reach. Indeed you are much too far out of my reach even when you are in Catonsville. I wish you were going home by way of New York, so that I could have glimpse of you, you dear little rascal.

December 19 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: I am hearing the very first words of the King’s Biography. AB is sitting here and reading them to me. The background of the book. The days that passed four months before the King was born. (He says 5 months before the King was born.) [MTP TS 121].

December 18 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Isabel V. Lyon replied for Sam to George L. Beam of the Denver & Rio Grande R.R. Co, Denver, Colo. “Mr. Clemens asks me to write for him & thank you for sending him the photograph & pamphlet. And to use his own words, he said, ‘Tell him I think it is a good strong clean-cut face & I hope it looks like me as that is the way I should like to look’”[MTP]. Note: Beam’s photo and pamphlet are not extant.

December 17 Tuesday – Charles R. Morris wrote from Washington DC to ask Sam if he would include his July 4 oration deliverd at Aurora, Nev. When he was a miner there [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “He has quoted the only sentence of the speech that I remember, & I don’t’ know anything about the rest of it.” See Dec. 18 for Sam’s reply.

George Grantham Bain wrote to Miss Lyon to ask which photos Sam wanted copies of and enclosing a ms. for her to return [MTP].