October 26 Saturday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam replied to Franklin G. Whitmore’s Oct. 25 request:
“Don’t do it again, Brer. Whenever you receive a book that requires an autograph, paste into it one of those I sent you, & start it along back. Nothing makes me so angry with an admirer as for him to pay me the compliment of putting me to a lot of trouble” [MTP].
October 25 Friday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Mr. Benthergsen of the N.Y. World, acknowledging receipt of a check for $288.76, which Sam wrote “squares up everything between the World and me and removes the last obstruction to the proper progress of the twentieth century….” [MTP:Kenneth W. Rendell catalogs, No. 134, Item 25]. Note: cable fees for sending the Nov. 1897 Reichsrath story ate up most of Sam’s fees; this squared the account.
Sam also wrote to Miss Meyer.
October 24 Thursday – The Bicentennial Celebration over, Clemens said farewell to the Chapins and other friends and returned home to Riverdale, N.Y.
Sam’s notebook: “Dodge dinner 7.30. Henry Guy Carleton comes in afternoon” [NB 44 TS 15]. Note: Henry Guy Carleton( 1856-1910), playwright and journalist, but best remembered as a humorist, his last play Colinette (1899) starred Julia Marlowe.
October 23 Wednesday – The fourth and last day of Yale’s Bicentennial Celebration in New Haven, Conn. saw commemoration exercises and conferring of honorary degrees in the Hyperion Theater to more than sixty eminent men. The Doctors of Literature degrees numbered eight: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, George W. Cable, Mark Twain, Richard Watson Gilder, William Dean Howells, Thomas Nelson Page, Woodrow Wilson, and Brander Matthews.
October 22 Tuesday – In New Haven, Conn. sometime after noon, Sam wrote to Livy of missing events of the previous day:
October 20 Sunday – In N.Y.C. Sam wrote on “Order of Acorns” letterhead to Joseph Johnson, Jr.
“Dear Mr. Johnson: / I forgot to say don’t do anything with the article without first giving me a chance to read the proof” [MTP].
October 19 Saturday – Sam’s notebook: “I go up Hudson by boat from Yonkers at 9.45” [NB 44 TS 15].
In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (1851-1926), youngest daughter of the famous author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
October 18 Friday – William Dean Howells wrote to Sam about accommodations in the upcoming Yale Bi-Centennial Celebration:
October 17 Thursday – The New York Sun, Oct. 18, p.3, reported Sam’s anti-Tammany talk for policemen in front of his Riverdale house, followed by a trip downtown for his speech at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for the Order of Acorns, a group of independent voters organized to defeat Tammany candidates and elect Seth Low mayor. The New York Times Oct. 18, p.5 reported only on the hotel speech:
MARK TWAIN MAKES A SPEECH.
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October 16 Wednesday – William Dean Howells replied to Sam that he would “gladly come to your feast of acorns tomorrow evening,” but was concerned they might “poke” him out without an invitation. He also poked Sam about the upcoming Yale event publicity:
“In the notice of the Yale guests, as I noted with my usual grouch where you are concerned, your name came first, with some laudatory type round it, and mine followed with the “and others,” and nothing attached to it. So I think there is some mistake” [MTHL 2: 731].