December 11 Thursday – Robert Green Ingersoll sent Sam a copy of his The Ghosts and Other Lectures (1879) inscribed: “Saml Clemens Esq / from his friend / R.G. Ingersoll / Dec 11, 79” [Gribben 344]. (See Dec. 13 entry). Note: Sam had asked for a good copy of Ingersoll’s recent Chicago speech, and read the speech to the young ladies at the Saturday Morning Club on Dec. 13, so this book must have included the speech.
December 10 Wednesday – Sam wrote a short note to Howells, asking to:
“…place this cuss’s name & address alongside Chatto’s, & order ‘simultane’ sheets to be sent to him & Chatto at the same time—when there are any?” Sam wanted to keep his word “for the novelty of it” [MTLE 4: 178].
December 9 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James Cowan (1839-1884), declining to “write something for the ‘Knapsack’ as his time was “so wholly occupied on the closing chapters of a book…” [MTLE 4: 175].
Sam’s response to Thomas B. Kirby ran under the heading “Mark Twain and Postal Matters” in the Hartford Courant [MTLE 4: 170; Camfield, bibliog.].
December 8 Monday – In Hartford, Sam responded to the Nov. 30 insulting letter from Thomas B. Kirby, private secretary to the Postmaster General, about Sam’s objections to the new postal regulations, which ran in the Hartford Courant. Sam’s hilarious response to Kirby was also sent to the editor of the Courant, and was printed there Dec. 9 [MTLE 4: 170].
December 5 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Frank Fuller, asking if he could get someone up to Hartford right away to fix the music box he’d ordered in Geneva.
Sam confided that he’d backed out of Slote’s speculation because his “lawyer insisted that it was risky” [MTLE 4: 168].
December 4 Thursday – Sam probably returned to Hartford late on Dec. 3 or this day. He described the visit as “intolerably short” in a Dec. 9 letter.
December 3 Wednesday – In Boston Sam spoke at the Atlantic Monthly Breakfast for Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 70th birthday [Fatout, MT Speaking 134]. This time there was no embarrassment, as Sam delivered a Howells-approved speech.
December 2 Tuesday – Sam left Hartford and traveled to Boston, then on to Howells’ residence in Belmont, Mass. Charles Dudley Warner had lobbied for Sam to attend and accompanied him to Boston, where he then went on to visit friends [MTLE 4: 157].
December 1 Monday – From Park & Tilford, New York, a long list of grocery items $136.01 tot, incl 2 dz Glen Whisky for $28 total [MTP].
William A. Seaver wrote from Mt. Vernon, NY to Sam.
Noble young Man:— / A young friend called at my house last evening, just as the bells were gonging for church, and asked me, in a perfectly serious manner, if you were the author of
“Jim Dobbs and the Tom Cats.”
December, before the 20th – Livy and Sam had enjoyed the Mother Goose performance at the Colt Party on Nov. 24. Livy wrote of it in her diary on Nov. 30 and soon planned her own such performance using James Elliott’s Mother Goose Set to Music. Sam’s notebook lists Piper’s Son as Mr. Carter; Dame Trot as Anne Trumbull; Emily as Mother Goose; Miss Barnard as Miss Muffett, Mr.