September 2 Friday – This issue of Collier’s Weekly ran a quote of Sam about Christians and voting: It will be conceded that a Christian’s first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code of morals to the polls and vote them. Whenever he shall do that, he will not find himself voting for an unclean man, a dishonest man. If Christians would vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease.

September 1 Thursday – John Hays Hammond’s handling of the Plasmon Co. of America’s near-insolvency created a dispute (see Aug. entry). A stockholders’ meeting was held on Sept. 1, and a new board of directors elected. Ralph W. Ashcroft was immediately elected general manager of the company by the new board. [Report of Cases Vol. 187 (1910): Ashcroft v. Hammond 491]. Sam may have attended, or may have given Ashcroft his proxy .

September – Sometime during the month, Clara Clemens checked herself into a sanatorium in Norfolk, Conn. Note: Clara returned at the end of the month to Dr. Parry to “continue her recuperation” [MTOW 44].

August 31 Wednesday – Sam’s sister, Pamela Ann Moffett, died in Greenwich, Conn., age 76.

August 30 Tuesday – Barlow Brothers, book binders in Grand Rapids, Mich., wrote asking where they might find a book of his with the story of limburger cheese on a railroad car [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the back of the letter “Mr. Clemens knows the sketch, but doesn’t know the book its in—Harpers publish all & doubtless they can tell.”

August 25 Thursday – Ralph W. Ashcroft wrote on Plasmon Co. letterhead to Sam, now in Great Neck, Long Island at the home of Urban H. Broughton.

August 22 Monday – By this day Sam had returned to Lee, Mass. where he wrote to Susan Crane.

Susy dear, you are right: put just the dates, as you suggest—or, add “Florence, Italy” to the “June 5, 1904”— for there is a deep pathos in that far-from-home-&-friends in the simple mention of that beyond-ocean name.

August 21 Sunday – Miss Ella McMahon in NYC wrote a short letter of condolence to Sam, enclosing a typed verse, “Not Thou But I,” by blind English poet Philip Bourke Marston (1850-1887) [MTP]. File says Margaret McMahon; Ella may have been a nickname.

August 20 Saturday – In a letter of July 14 Cecilia Beaux, the famous portrait artist, wrote to her friend Dorothea Gilder (dau. Richard Watson Gilder) asking to arrive this evening “for a few days.” Beaux had met Sam in London on June 1, 1900 when traveling with the Gilders (see entry). No mention of Twain appears in correspondence between the two friends, but if Beaux did in fact visit, it’s likely Sam and Cecilia saw each other sometime during the next few days [Cecilia Beaux to Dorothea Gilder Aug.

August 19 Friday – Albert Bigelow Paine wrote to Sam. “Proofs with two extracts from your letters to Nast just came in. I enclose slip— / I think there are one or two more, later” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “These are unobjectionable”; the enclosed sheets with MT’s letter excerpts to Nast, are not dated in the text, but from the cues are: “Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigous victory for Grant,” which is letter of Dec. 10, 1872; and “The Almanac has come,” letter of Dec. 17, 1872.