November 7 Tuesday – George W. Cable wrote from N. Orleans to Sam: “I’m not going to try to say anything—adequate. I am here to thank you and Mrs. Clemens for your delightful hospitality, but what shall I say. I kiss my hand. I kiss Mrs. Clemens hand. I get out my handkerchief. But all is ineffectual-insufficient. Embrace the dear little girls, Susie Clara & Jean for me. … / I sent the books to you a day or two ago, (On the 4th). Mrs. Cable had failed to find them all…” [MTP]. Note: Sam received the books Nov.

November 6 Monday – James R. Osgood wrote to Sam wanting Webster to come to Boston and arrange all the details for LM publishing [MTP].

November 5 Sunday – The New York Times, under “LITERARY NOTES” page 3:

—The announcement that a new work on American humor by Mark Twain and W.D. Howells is in the press is somewhat premature. No such book has as yet been written, and as Mr. Clemens has still in his possession two completed manuscripts, it is difficult to say when a still unwritten book is likely to appear.

Note: This may have been planted by Sam to discourage questions about what would become The Library of Humor.

November 4 Saturday – In Hartford Sam typed a note to Howells, who wrote Oct. 17 from Vaud, Switzerland. Howells tried to convince Sam to “pack up your family and come to Florence for the winter.” Sam responded:

Yes, it would be profitable for me to do that, because with your society to help me, I should swiftly finish this now interminable book. But I cannot come, because I am not boss here, and nothing but dynamite can move Mrs. Clemens away from home in the winter season.

November 2 Thursday – Karl Gerhardt wrote to Sam and Livy having rec’d the new letter of credit for £100, and promised that “every cent will be used to the best advantage” [MTP].

October 31 Tuesday – Karl Gerhardt wrote to Sam and Livy, excited about their new professor for sculpture, M. Falguera, “one of the strongest French sculptors of the day.” He enclosed a notice from “the Boston Advertiser regarding a proposed equestrian statue of Paul Revere”—didn’t Sam think it a good idea for him to enter the contest for the Revere statue? [MTP].

October 30 Monday – In Hartford Sam typed a one-liner to Charles Webster. “Dear Charlie, Give the man the papers he wants, or kill him, I don’t care which” [MTBus 204].

Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk.

My Dear Brother: / The $150 came from Perkin’s to-day.

      I moved into my office to-day. Been with Marshall some weeks. Didn’t have fires; caught cold; couldn’t study; they talked too much.

October 29 Sunday – Sam wrote to Robert D. Brain, letter not extant but referred to in Brain’s Oct. 30.

October 27 Friday – In Hartford Sam typed a note to Andrew Chatto asking for maps that they couldn’t find and that his governess wanted. Could they be shipped? [MTP]. The Clemens children’s governess since 1880 was Lilly Gillette Foote.

October 24 Tuesday – Charles Webster acknowledged Sam’s check for $500, which was used to purchase a list of Western agents from H.N. Hinckley, who had been sent by Elisha Bliss to open a Chicago branch of Am. Publishing Co. The lists held about 500 agents who had sold Sam’s prior books, and another 7,000 persons who’d applied for agency to sell the books. Also included was Hinckley’s unsold supply of older books.