April 24 Tuesday – Francis Hopkinson Smith sent Sam a humorous and clever way of announcing the date of the Water Color Dinner, May 3 — An oversized “Bondsmen’s Oath” certificate with official “seal” and Hopkinson’s signature testified to the ticket as his property [MTP]. See Apr. 27.
April 23 Monday – Intended U.S. publication date for Mark Twain’s Library of Humor [Mar. 7 to Chatto].
Frederick J. Hall for Webster & Co. wrote a note to Sam that his “favor received and contents noted. Will you kindly let me know when you will be here?” Hall had to move on Apr. 26-27 [MTP].
April 21 Saturday – This was the intended Canadian publication date for Mark Twain’s Library of Humor, published by Dawson Brothers of Montreal, but it was held up by a shipment error of the printer’s plates [Mar. 7 to Chatto; MTNJ 3: 376n248]. Sam returned home to Hartford from Montreal.
April 20 Friday – London publication date for Mark Twain’s Library of Humor [Mar. 7 to Chatto; MTNJ 3: 376n248]. Sam was in Montreal.
Andrew Chatto wrote to Sam that they had “just completed the formal publication of your Library of American Humor by the sale of a few early copies” [MTP].
April 19 Thursday – In Hartford Sam responded to a letter from his mother-in-law, Olivia Lewis Langdon (not extant, but from Sam’s letter, about Apr. 12), mostly about Livy, who was “getting steadily along & regaining her health by sure degrees.” Livy missed the late Dr. Cincinnatus Taft, but was “thoroughly satisfied” with the current physician, Dr. E.W.
April 17 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam finished his Apr. 15 letter to Robert Louis Stevenson. Livy was better (Sam likened her to a battered ship “slowly undergoing repairs”), and would be out of her sick room in about a week he thought.
April 16 Monday – Louise M. Madden wrote from Chicago for Sam’s autograph [MTP].
L.. Loisette for Loisettian School wrote to Sam that he was going to “reply to the unmemorial blackguards who beginning a few years ago with slight misrepresentation have advanced from my silence & forebearance to lies pure & simple” [MTP].
April 15 Sunday – Matthew Arnold died while running to catch a tram in Liverpool. He was 65.
In Hartford Sam began a letter to Robert Louis Stevenson, which he would finish on Apr. 17, in response to Stevenson’s Apr. 13 letter.
April 14 Saturday – Frederick J. Hall for Webster & Co. wrote to Sam, “sorry indeed to hear of the sickness in your family.” Hall wrote that Webster would be in Fredonia when the book was published and had volunteered to run over to Canada and register “on the other side” [MTP].
April 13 Friday – In Hartford Sam responded to Lorettus S. Metcalf, editor of Forum Magazine.
When I left you I found that Mrs. Clemens’s attack was diptheria — & that she was perilously ill. That stopped the Arnold-article on the spot, of course…. This afternoon one of the children has gone to bed ailing. These are not good times in which to write magazine articles [MTP].