August 16 Friday – In Elmira Sam telegraphed Robert Underwood Johnson of the Century:
I see Gilders position clearly and he is right. Leave the article out and I will write you an article on some other subject [MTP]. Note: Sam appears to be calling their bluff on the title.
August 15 Thursday – What Baetzhold calls “one hot August morning” during the family’s summer stay at Quarry Farm, a relatively unknown young man tramped up the hill to visit. A year later, after a meteoric rise in literary circles, he would be widely read and discussed. Sam would later say, he knew this man’s work “better than I know anybody else’s books”: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). The exact date of Kipling’s visit, Aug.
August 14 Wednesday – Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam enclosing the finished title page for CY. He also mentioned Charles A. Durfee, who was in with a book of quotations to publish [MTP].
August 13-14 Wednesday – It is possible but unlikely that Sam made the intended trip to Hartford through New York during this period; it would have been a rushed trip, since he was in Elmira on Aug. 15 when Kipling arrived. In his Aug. 2 to his brother he wrote: “I go to Hartford a couple of days hence to remain a spell.” No outgoing letters from Sam are extant for the period. Further, Sam refers to a “made delay by going away” in his Aug.
August 12 Monday – Andrew H.H. Dawson wrote on District Attorney’s Office, NYC stationery to Sam:
It’s a whack! I’ll go it — do it — risk it, yea in the full frowning face of the fate of the Ides of March gang & the Flack flock, I’ll enter into the conspiracy you propose & will carry it out to the letter reckless of consequences. I made the same contract once with Stewart & Woodford & did redeem to the letter my part of it but he… [did not.] [MTP].
August 10 Saturday – In Cambridge, Mass. Howells answered Sam’s plea of Aug. 5:
You know it will be purely a pleasure to me to read your proofs. So far as the service I may be is concerned, that I gladly owe you for your many generous acts; and if I didn’t want to read the book for its own sake or your sake, I should still want to do it for Mrs. Clemens [MTHL 2: 609].
August 9 Friday – Sam’s notebook: [chk #] 4388. A.H.H. Dawson, $10, Aug. 9 / [chk #] 4389 Langdon & Co. $100 Aug. 9 [3: 491].
Sam wrote to George Standring, letter not extant but referred to in Standring’s Sept. 16 [MTP].
Franklin G. Whitmore wrote to Sam:
August 8 Thursday – Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam about Johnson of the Century wanting the material and illustrations and of the one picture by Daniel Beard “made as a sample.”
August 7 Wednesday – In Elmira Sam wrote to the editors of the Century:
I’ve done as you required — done my very levelest best to get it to you in time for the November number — & I reckon I’ve succeeded. — Hope so, anyway. I mail it to-night.
Sam also wrote that he would have Fred Hall hurry Dan Beard with the illustrations [MTP].
Adrien C. d’Henzel wrote from St. Paul, Minn.; this is a “begging letter”; Sam wrote on the env. “An incorrigible humbug” [MTP].
August 6 Tuesday – In Elmira Sam wrote to Francis de Winton (1835-1901), a friend of the Marquis of Lorne who later was appointed by King Leopold to take Sir Henry Stanley’s place in the Congo. He was a recognized authority of central Africa.