May 5, 1906 Saturday

May 5 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam inscribed an etching to Edward Lauterbach: “It is not best to use our morals on weekdays, Edward, it gets them out of repair for Sunday. Your friend / Mark Twain / May 5, 1906.” [MTP].  

Sam also wrote to Oren Root, Jr., an officer in the Kingsbridge Railway Co.

May 4, 1906 Friday

May 4 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam, down with bronchitis again, wrote to Charlotte Teller Johnson.

I have your note, dear lady Charlotte, & of course I say “Yes”—quite willingly, too.

Professor Giddings’s article is remorselessly severe, but it is all good sense. The editorial is sane, also. The whole case is as pitiful as it can be—that of those poor Gorkys, I mean.

May 3, 1906 Thursday

May 3 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Mr. Clemens’s inspiration for this morning. ‘Get up a stench in England about the Gospel. Have 200 copies printed anonymously there, uncopyrighted, too” [MTP TS 69].

May 1906

May – Poultney Bigelow wrote a short note to Sam from Malden, N.Y.. “Bless you—best of Sublunary Benefactors—long years to you—full years—happy years for the sake of your fellow humans” [MTP].

Human Life published “Mark Twain—Dean of Our Humorists,” by William A. Graham, p. 1- 2. Tenney: “A popular, appreciative account, chiefly of the Hartford years. Mentions conversations with MT and hearing him speak at a Thanksgiving-Day dinner at the YMCA in 1888 o 1889” [“A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 190].

April 30, 1906 Monday

April 30 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Robert Reid.

I keep thinking about that picture—I cannot get it out of my mind. I think—no, I know—that it is the most moving, the most eloquent, the most profoundly pathetic picture I have ever seen. It wrings the heart to look at it, it is so desolate, so grieved. It realizes San Francisco to us as words have not done & cannot do. I wonder how many women can look upon it & keep back their tears—or how many unhardened men, for that matter?  [MTP].

April 28, 1906 Saturday

April 28 Saturday – Sam wrote to Gertrude Natkin, his letter not extant but referred to in Natkin’s reply of early May. From the context of her reply, Sam asked her if she would like to have an autographed photo of himself for her room [MTP].

April 26, 1906 Thursday

April 26 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote congratulations to Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Lilian W. Aldrich in Ponkapog, Mass.

I rejoice with you.. This is from habit, temperament, training, tradition—that straitjacket which keeps its grip on us always & won’t allow our common sense any little liberty to work. And I rejoice with you in earnest, I can’t help it. Oh, I know—I know. I have stood where Talbot stands, & was happy: happy, & not afraid. What riches! And now—what poverty! Life is a silly invention, an immeasurable brutality. Now, then——
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