January 10 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

Today busy with check book and uninteresting mail during the morning. Mr. Clemens is still in his bed, but looks very much better than he did, and today Dr. Quintard pronounced him nearly normal. I played over the Tschaikowsky Finale of the Sonata Pathetique today. It is very beautiful.

January 9 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

The days fly busily along. There seems no chance of ever settling the house. Mr. Clemens is still in his bed—and the best things in the day are the games of 500 beside his bed. We play on a big square cigar box. Today a long gaunt reporter from “The World” came to have Mr. Clemens comment upon an account of himself. He tried to extract information from me, but I am solemnly non-committal [MTP: TS 36-37].

January 8 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon wrote to Harriet E. Whitmore (Mrs. Franklin G. Whitmore). Excerpted here only the passages dealing with the Clemens family:

January 7 Saturday – Sam’s notebook:

“60 years ago, optimist & fool were not synonymous terms. This is a greater change than that wrought by science & invention. It is the mightiest change that was ever wrought in the world in any 60 years since creation” [NB 47A TS 3].

January 6 Friday – In San Remo, Italy, William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.

January 5 Thursday – Literally thousands of articles, reprints, and mentions of Mark Twain appeared in American newspapers from coast to coast during this period. This tidbit, from the Dallas Morning News, p. 6, borrowed from an unspecified issue of Harper’s Weekly:

What Is In a Name.

Mark Twain once went into a restaurant and sat down at a table near a solitary man who had just arrived and was giving his order to the waiter.

January 4 Wednesday – The Aberdeen (S.D.) Daily News, p. 2, “Mark Twain’s Pranks” reported reminiscences by Captain H. Lacy, who was born in Hannibal in 1839. Lacy claims it was not Jim Wolfe who was the victim of the famous skeleton-in-bed prank (sometime in the 1840s), but “a tramp printer named Snell,” who “blew into Hannibal one day and was given work on the paper.” Lacy claimed to be along on the prank; his account offers not only a different victim than has been imagined (see MTL 1: 18n4; also Ch.

January 3 Tuesday – Charles Langdon wrote to Sam, enclosing a check for $120, payment of coupons on bonds (Park Co. Montana, and General Electric Co.) which had been owned by Susie Clemens [MTP].

Sam’s notebook:

Reduce p.c. on Congo.
Do you want Jean’s new article?
Man born with fal[s]e teeth
Palmistry article [with hand pointing up to next page] [NB 47A TS 1].

January 2 Monday Sam’s notebook: contains an aphorism circled, followed by a list of things to do lined through as if completed:

January 1 Sunday – Sam’s notebook: contains a list of things to do lined through as if completed: