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:

January – In N.Y.C. Sam spent the last part of December and all of January in bed, recovering from another case of bronchitis, followed by attacks of gout in his feet [Jan. 8 Lyon to Whitmore; Jan. 25 to Crane].

Sam wrote to the International Plasmon Co., London

December 31 Thursday – Sam wrote from Cleveland, Ohio to Livy:

December 30 Wednesday – Sam wrote in the morning from Cleveland to Livy and told her of the letter he’d written her father the day before. Sam confessed misgivings about his letters to Jervis Langdon, but also told her of Mary Fairbanks reading a letter from Mrs. Langdon, one favorably disposed to Sam.