December 24 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
C.C. goes to spend tonight with the Gilders & she’ll hang up her stocking. The King wanted to be represented too in that stocking, so he sent me up to Vantine’s to buy a pin—it happened to be a jade pin & is good.
December 23 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied with thanks to the Dec. 18 of Helen Keller.
O, thank you for those lovely words!
Now as to your January visit: we must certainly meet then, & have a talk.
Another thing. You say,
“As a reformer, you know that ideas must be driven home again & again.”
December 22 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to thank Emilie R. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers) for the Christmas cigars and the kind remembrance. He would come up “pretty soon” to wish a Merry Christmas in person as he’d “worked off the several-days’ engagements which Clara had piled” on [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Mrs. Fiske’s play” [MTP TS 151-152].
The New York Times, Dec. 23, p.2 ran an article about Mark Twain and the telephone, quoting him from the previous day, Dec. 22:
December 21 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Electric music. Bermuda.
The King is planning to go to Bermuda if Mr. Twichell can go too, & I’m to go as valet & myself. I’ve written to Mr. Twichell & now we’re waiting. Mr. Clemens would like to go there for the summer & has had me look up the temperature & other things. He thinks he’d like the isolation, but the lack of companionship would make more desolation for him than anything else, for he of all people must have companionship—mental companionship.
December 20 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Geraldine Farrar” [MTP TS 150].
Clemens’ A.D. of this day included: Capt. Osborn tells to Bret Harte, in a Californian restaurant, his adventure of falling overboard and his rescue. A tramp overhears him, claims to be his rescuer, is liberally rewarded, and afterwards discovered to be an impostor [MTP Autodict3].
William R. Coe sent Sam a large fold out map of Bermuda. No letter [MTP].
December 19 Wednesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to the Dec. 13 from Miss Cally Thomas Ryland. “I am thankful to say that such letters as yours do come—as you have divined—with a happy frequency. They refresh my life, they give it value; like yours, they are always welcome, and I am always grateful for them. / Sincerely Yours …” [MTP]. Note: Ryland used a common device for humorist—she created a fictional “alter ego” who could get away with speaking blunt and outlandish truths, much like Twain’s “Mr. Brown.” She was the society editor for the Richmond News Leader.
December 18 Tuesday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to Frederic Whyte’s Dec. 7, which included an excerpt from Alfred Russel Wallace’s book The Wonderful Century containing advocacy of phrenology. Whyte asked if Sam had studied phrenology (reading of bumps on the scalp).
December 17 Monday – In N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam and declined an invitation to lecture from Mrs. Caverly [MTP].
Clemens’ A.D. of this day included: The coincidence of the Kaiser’s and the portier’s appreciation of “Old Times on the Mississippi,” expressed almost in the same moment—The coincidence of Clemens reflecting on the definition of the word civilization, and then picking up the morning paper and finding his very ideas set forth by a writer who attributed the marrow of his remarks to Clemens [MTP Autodict3].
December 16 Sunday – Mr. and Mrs. Edwin R. Ray wrote, from Tacoma,Wash. to express thanks for HF—their two “fine boys” are always “instantly delighted” by having it read to them [MTP].
December 15 Saturday – Harper’s Weekly published Mark Twain’s letter to Henry Mills Alden to observe Alden’s 70 birthday. The letter was written sometime between Oct. 22 and Nov. 10, 1906.