August 12 Friday – Sam wrote twice from Elmira to Charles Webster. The longest letter asked him to negotiate with the remodelers William & Robert Garvie and James Ahern on work in progress at the Farmington Avenue house, principally a remodel of the kitchen. Sam gave quite a long laundry list of things to check, recheck, prove and consider.
August 11 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Benjamin H. Ticknor, enclosing a check for $850.26 for publishing costs, probably for P&P and its circular. Ticknor had requested sales points for a circular and Sam replied that he wasn’t the best man to give them, that he should “leave it alone ten days & then get the points from Osgood & Anthony, & a suggestion or two from Howells…” [MTP]. (See Aug.14.)
August 10 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Joel Chandler Harris in Atlanta, who wrote Sam on Aug. 4 [MTLP 401].
August 9 Tuesday – Marie A. Brown wrote from Chicago to Sam: “Your advice to authors—to publish themselves and to give a commission to instead of receiving it from publishers—is invaluable, and I long to follow it.” She asked his further advice about her six historical novels from the Swedish [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “A Curiosity"
August 8 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Franklin Whitmore. He complained of lumbago from “Carrying Jean up & down in the car, on that red-hot 12 hour trip.” He told of Jean’s whimpering and of Susy and Clara’s stoicism during the ordeal.
August 7 Sunday Livy wrote from Elmira to Hattie Gerhardt, and Sam added “God be wi’ ye!” at the end. The letter was about their “long and very tiresome trip from the sea side to Quarry Farm; of baby Jean and her preference for her father; and admonitions for Karl Gerhardt not to work too hard; and an inquiry if they’d seen Mrs. Warner, who evidently was visiting the Continent [MTP].
August 6 Saturday – Sam telegraphed from Elmira to Franklin Whitmore.
“BROKE AN AXLE EIGHT HOURS FROM NEW YORK AND TWENTY FIVE MILES FROM HOME LAY STILL & ROASTED TWO HOURS REACHED HOME AT NINE, PM EVERYBODY IS BRIGHT AND WELL TODAY” [MTP]
August 5 Friday – Based on Sam’s telegram of Aug. 6, this is the likely day for the 10-hour train trip from New York to Elmira, this time taking an extra two hours
August 4 Thursday – The Clemens family left the Montowese House in Branford, Conn. headed to Elmira with a stop in Hartford to do a few errands [MTNJ 2: 396n135]. Likely the day the Clemens family went to New York City. As was their custom, they probably stayed the night in a good hotel and continued on to Elmira the next day.
August 2 Tuesday – Sam wrote to Herbert M. Laurence in Venice, letter not extant but referred to in Laurence’s Aug. 26 reply