November 27 Tuesday – Livy’s 43rd birthday – Livy wrote of the day:
I had a very pleasant birthday the children fixed me a very pretty table with flowers and their gifts and we had an exceedingly good time
Sam wrote the following note, perhaps with a gift:
Livy darling, I am grateful — gratefuller than ever before — that you were born, & that your love is mine & our two lives woven & welded together! SLC [LLMT 251].
November 26 Monday – Sam took Grace King to visit Smith College in Northhampton, Mass., where he evidently gave a reading. A list in his notebook for Smith included items for his talk/reading: Brer Rabbit, Golden Arm, Whistling story, Christening story, Browning’s Horse-race. In a letter the following day to her sister Nan, King described the trip to the railroad station:
November 25 Sunday – Richard Malcolm Johnston wrote to Sam “(For Mrs. Clemens)”… “mighty glad” that he went to Hartford, thanking for hospitality from “Happy people…up there in that lovely suburb…” [MTP].
November 24 Saturday – Augustin Daly wrote to Sam that he did not find a play in Grace King’s Monsieur Motte [Bush 45].
George W. Green for Am. Copyright League wrote to Sam announcing Sam had been “unanimously elected a member of the council” at their Nov. 12, 1888 meeting [MTP].
November 23 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Orion, thanking him for hickory nuts sent and announcing he’d ordered the Library of American Literature sent to him and also Samuel Moffett as the Clemens family’s Christmas presents. Orion had failed to purchase a house he and Mollie had wanted, and Sam sent advice:
November 22 Thursday – The Clemens family returned to Hartford sometime between Nov. 21 and 23, probably this day.
November 21 Wednesday – In New York, the Clemens family (less Susy) and Grace King, and also possibly William Dean Howells, spent the morning looking at the paintings of a Russian realist of warfare, Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904). From Grace’s Nov. 22 to her sister May:
November 20 Tuesday –Grace King wrote to her sister May King McDowell of the excursion to New York with the Clemenses:
November 19 Monday – Orion and Mollie Clemens finished a letter to Sam & Livy they began Nov. 17 (annotated, letter & clipping enclosed);
William H. Wiegel, an old, wounded veteran with six children wrote asking Sam for a loan of $35; he had a $1,500 claim against the government that would be settled. A return envelope was unused [MTP].
November 17 Saturday – Orion and Mollie Clemens began a letter to Sam & Livy they finished on Nov. 19 (letter enclosed from Dr. J.M. Clemens in Louisville, Ky. & Orion’s Gate City clipping enclosed); Orion reported he’d received books, was reading the Library of Humor, which he was reading part of to Ma. He wrote some details of the house transaction which was not completed; and regrets about the Tennessee Land.