August 16 Saturday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster, who evidently had advised that the furnace improvements in the Hartford house could be done for $750. Sam approved, but dictated that no workmen need to go up into the house from the cellar [MTP].
August 15 Friday – Bissell & Co. wrote to Clemens that the Am. Express in Europe would look up his dividend and advise [MTP].
August 14 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster—more about the Huck Finn proofs “If all the proofs had been as well read as the first 2 or 3 chapters were, I should not have needed to see the revises at all. On the contrary it was the worst & silliest proof-reading I have ever seen. It was never read by copy at all—not a single galley of it.” He added that the game had only a year to file patent; see Oct. 9 entry [MTP].
August 13 Wednesday – Bissell & Co. wrote to Clemens trying to reconcile his account [MTP].
August 11 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to American Publishing Co., probably about the cheap editions being advertised by The Frank Coker News Co. of Talladega, Ala
“Unless you bring suit at once to enjoin these pirates, I must sue for the annulling of my contracts with you, upon the ground that you make no sufficient efforts to protect my copyrights from infringement” [MTP].
August 10 Sunday – In Boston, Howells wrote to Sam:
August 9 Saturday – The Critic ran an article, “The Lounger,” unsigned, which noted the tact with which James B. Pond announced the upcoming lecture season, giving Mark Twain and George W. Cable billings which would cause neither to feel slighted [Tenney, Supplement American Literary Realism, Autumn 1980 p170].
August 8 Friday – William F. Cody for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show wrote to Clemens [MTP].
Stephen C. Massett wrote from the Catskills, about Mrs. Sheffield, mother of Mrs. Bartholomew, “with whom you used to board & lodge on 16th street in 1869!” She was in NYC and would like to see Clemens [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Tiresome Jeems / No answer”
August 7 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Howells.
August 6 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Eliot Norton declining an invitation to the annual dinner for the arts in Ashfield Mass., pleading age and rheumatism for “so long a journey in the heats of summer.”
Some day, I hope, you will change your dinner-hour to winter; then I am likely to be close by & idle; also hungry. …