January 31 Sunday – From the Hotel Normandie in New York City, Sam wrote a short letter to William C. Prime, who was representing General George B. McClellan’s widow for publishing the General’s memoirs. Charles L. Webster & Co. Published McClellan’s Own Story in 1887.
January 30 Saturday – Sam was at the Hotel Normandie in New York [Prime’s Jan. 29].
The copyright issue and bills in the U.S. Congress also resonated overseas. The London Pall Mall Gazette carried an article, “THE AMERICANS AND INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT” on p.7:
January 29 Friday – As Fatout points out, Sam was somewhat ambivalent about the Hawley Bill but when pressed on the matter before the Senate Committee on Patents on the second day of testimony, he said:
January 28 Thursday – In Washington, D.C., Sam spoke before the U.S. Senate Committee, His “Remarks on Copyright” can be found in Fatout’s Mark Twain Speaking, p.206-9. Fatout prefaces:
January 27 Wednesday – Sam left New York in the morning and traveled by train to Washington. He intended to stay at the Ebbitt House.
January 26 Tuesday – In New York, headed to Washington the next day, Sam sent his love to the “chil’n” in a letter to Livy.
Livy dear, the contracts are signed & delivered, & everything is satisfactory.
January 25 Monday – William Mackay Laffan for the N.Y. Sun. Wrote warning that he’d seen the Baltimore (Mergenthaler) machine set type on Saturday Jan 23:
…every daily in this town will be set up by that machine inside of twelve months….This is confidential; but you’d better haul in your tents and [illegible] like hell [MTP].
January 24 Sunday – William C. Prime wrote to Sam from New York, asking when Sam might be in town to discuss the McClellan book. Prime was representing General George B. McClellan’s widow for publishing the General’s memoirs. [MTP]. Note: Prime also wrote Dec. 31, 1885.
In 1908, Sam dictated this about Prime, who was James Hammond Trumbull’s brother-in law:
January 23 Saturday – Ambrose Bierce’s short article in The Wasp (San Francisco) was a sneering discussion of Sam’s Jan. 18 speech at the Typothetae Dinner. Bierce felt Sam had lost his humor: “foremost among those desecrators of the tomb of Mark the Jester is Mark the Money-worm….”his last atrocious desecration” was the speech as reported by the Associated Press.
January 22 Friday – James B. Pond wrote to Sam; he’d been on the road with Clara Louise Kellogg and was trying unsuccessfully to get a commitment from George W. Cable for a reading in Concord, Mass. Pond confessed that Sam’s “letter could be read both ways, or at least I read it so” [MTP]. See Jan. 20 entry.