April 2 Tuesday – On the S.S. Paris en route to Southampton, Sam wrote to Clarence C. Buel, editor of Century Magazine.
Before I left I put in nearly a whole night trying to write something for the October number; but it was only a doubtful success, so I had to pigeonhole it for a future effort.
The Clemens family had been living in Europe since June of 1891 in an attempt to economize. Mark Twain had not escaped the wrath of the “Panic of 1893”, a period of economic depression in the United States. Five hundred banks closed, 15,000 businesses failed, and numerous farms ceased operation. The unemployment rate reached 25% in Pennsylvania, 35% in New York, and 43% in Michigan. Soup kitchens were opened to help feed the destitute. Facing starvation, people chopped wood, broke rocks, and sewed by hand with needle and thread in exchange for food.
April – Harper’s Monthly Magazine began publishing serially and anonymously, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, which ran through April 1896 [MTHHR 144n2], publishing it as a book in May 1896 with Mark Twain’s name on the spine and cover but not the title page. See Apr. 15 to Harrison, for Sam’s condition of anonymity and penalty should it be broken. See also Feb. 23 and Mar. entries.
March 31 Sunday – Sam was en route on the S.S. Paris for Havre, France.
March 28 Thursday – Sam was en route on the S.S. Paris for Havre, France.
March 27 Wednesday – In New York at the Rogers home, a few minutes before leaving to board the S.S. Paris, Sam wrote a paragraph to Franklin G. Whitmore after receiving Whitmore’s letter, not extant, date uncertain.
March 26 Tuesday – An unidentified person wrote to Sam (envelope only, Keller to Dodge Mar. 29 encl.) [MTP]. Note: this is the letter of Helen Keller’s quoted in Mar. 24 entry, so the sender may have been its recipient, Mary Mapes Dodge.
March 25 Monday – Sam traveled to Philadelphia, where he gave a luncheon speech at Cramp’s Shipyard for a dedication ceremony of a new liner. Fatout’s intro to the speech, p.274, MT Speaking:
March 24 Sunday – In New York, fourteen year old Helen Keller (1880-1968), the first deafblind person who would graduate from college, met Sam and William Dean Howells at Laurence Hutton’s. (Sam’s Nov. 26, 1896 to Emilie Rogers mentions that H.H. Rogers was also present.) Keller wrote to her friend, Mary Mapes Dodge on Mar. 29 (using a new script typewriter, a “Remington”) of the meeting on the previous Sunday (Mar.
March 23 Saturday – In New York, Sam wrote a letter to John Elderkin, secretary of the Lotos Club. The letter was printed in the N.Y. Tribune for Apr. 25, 1895, p.11, along with a notice that “Mark Twain has been elected a life member of the Lotos Club.”