August 21 Sunday – Karl & Hattie J. Gerhardt wrote to Sam and Livy that “everything with us goes along about the same.” She also wrote of working on a child’s bust (Jean Clemens?) and asked if she should “have a photo taken of it while it was clay so that alteration can be made?” [MTP].
August 19 Friday – Charles Eliot Norton wrote to Clemens, hoping they would see him before Wednesday, and asking what day he might expect him for the festival [MTP].
John Esten Cooke wrote from Boyce, Va. to thank Clemens for info on Hartford publishing houses, but there wasn’t much to encourage publishing there. Cooke was likely a book agent for he stated that they would do well with Sam’s latest book [MTP].
August 18 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Franklin Whitmore who had spent some vacation time with the Clemenses at Branford, Conn. earlier in the summer. Sam squared accounts with Whitmore on his share of the meals. He also enclosed a:
August 17 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster. Evidently Webster had recommending closing up the Kaolatype business, but Sam poured good money after bad.
You wish to know when I shall “close up?” When the business pays me $5,000 a year clear profit. Not before. The brass alone shall pay me more than that, before I am done with it….
August 16 Tuesday – In Belmont, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam:
Your Ashfield audience will be the farmer-folks of the region, quiet and dull on top, but full of grit and fun; they’re fond of speaking, and rather cultivated, but not spoiled. They know you, like a book, and you can trust all your points to them. Their life is one of deadly solitude and suffocating frugality; but they are smart. They will stand lots of human nature from you [MTHL 1: 365].
August 15 Monday – Sam wrote a short note from Hartford to Benjamin H. Ticknor, agreeing with Ticknor’s processing an engraving cut down to the required reduction. Sam would wait for Chapter 1 of P&P to evaluate the book fully illustrated consecutively [MTP].
August 14 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Benjamin H. Ticknor about the advertising circular for P&P, and the illustrations he’d chosen for a run of 20 special books. Frank T. Merrill was the principal illustrator of the book and Sam wrote:
August 13 Saturday – A.W. Johnson wrote from Salisbury, Mo. to tell Clemens of his wife’s connections to Florida, Mo. and of his love of Sam’s books [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “From a fellow native’s husband”
Mark Twain Club per Phil Hannagan sent a voluminous paper, “Twain Club Papers No 1” to Clemens [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Introduced by that lunatic Irishman of Carlow Castle”
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.)