June 12, 1885 Friday

June 12 Friday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to his sister, Pamela Moffett, explaining against her admonitions why he hadn’t written her.

Correspondence is the despair of my life. Suppose you had to have 15 teeth pulled every day; & every time you lost 3 days…

June 11, 1885 Thursday 

June 11 Thursday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to the editor of the Christian Union. Sam’s letter, a reaction to a Union article, “What Ought He to have Done,” ran in that publication on June 16 on pages 4-5, and is a great argument for the proper application of a whipping to a wayward child, given in the right spirit “with hearts wholly free from temper.” Significantly, Sam ended the letter about proper parenting by referring to Livy:

June 10, 1885 Wednesday

June 10 Wednesday – Sam was attending to “imperative business” in New York. This is the third day of a three day stay there [Sam to Moffett, June 12].

Daniel Whitford for Alexander & Green wrote they couldn’t get “the note of introduction to Mr Bates President of the Baltimore & Ohio Telegraph Company (which you desire) until tomorrow” [MTP].

June 9, 1885 Tuesday

June 9 Tuesday – Sam was in New York. He gave notice to his canvassers that volume two of Grant’s work would soon be published. Perry writes that Sam:

“…contracted for the use of twelve more printing presses and seven more bindaries, all of which combined would produce one set of memoirs every second. All of Twain’s funds were now tied up in printing, marketing, and distributing Grant’s memoirs” [203].

From Sam’s notebook:

June 8, 1885 Monday

June 8 Monday – Clara Clemens’ eleventh birthday. She received a lawn tennis set, Livy recording the gifts in her diary [Mark Twain News 39.2 (Summer 1995): 9].

Sam took the early morning train to New York and took a room at the Everett House. From Livy’s diary:

June 7, 1885 Sunday 

June 7 Sunday – The last entry in Sam’s “A Record of the Small Foolishnesses of Susie & ‘Bay’ Clemens (Infants),” was made this day.

Livy Clemens’ diary:

“I am reading with great interest George Elliott [Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)’s Life by her husband J.W. Cross.] It is most delightful….The only thing in the book that annoys me is her constant mentions of her ill health.”

June 4, 1885 Thursday

June 4 Thursday – Sam, wrote from Hartford to Karl Gerhardt, advising him to tag along with Webster to see General Grant “two or three days in succession” and to observe him in various poses so as to work on a large statue to be presented to the City of New York. Sam hoped for orders of it from other cities.

June 3, 1885 Wednesday

June 3 Wednesday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to James B. Pond.

“Damn it, we could not get that donkey, after all, & so I hope you will get Homer to rush a gentle small burro to Elmira in a hurry, for Jean, or she will be dreadfully disappointed. We shall arrive there the 18th of June & go up to the farm a few days or a week later” [MTP]. Note: Jean would be five on July 26.

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