November 6 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Hjalmar Boyesen of Ithaca, New York. Boyesen and family had been in Paris at the same time as the Clemens family. Sam listed the letters he had written Boyesen after being informed by a “fine young fellow” named Bacon that he hadn’t answered Boyesen’s letters. Sam wrote that their “unpacking room looks like a furniture hospital” [MTLE 4: 127].
November 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to U.D. at the W.K. Carson Co., Baltimore, Maryland. U.D. had evidently asked for a biographical sketch. Sam referred him to the listing in Men of the Time, by Routledge, or Allibone’s Dictionary of Authors [MTLE 4: 125].
November 4 Tuesday – Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote from Ponkapog to Sam.
November 1 Saturday – Sam wrote a check drawn on George P. Bissell & Co, Bankers, Hartford, to Patrick McAleer, the family coachman, for $52.45 [MTP].
November – Sam sent a correspondence card to an unidentified person with this maxim, altering “the great & good Franklin”:
“Never put off till tomorrow what can be put off till day after tomorrow just as well” [MTLE 4: 123].
November to December 15, 1879 – Clemens wrote to unidentified. Cue: “I consider it slander…”; not found at MTP though catalogued as UCCL 13217.
October 31 Friday – Sam wrote a check drawn on George P. Bissell & Co., Bankers, Hartford, to Water Commissioner, $22.50 [MTP].
October 30 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Joseph Blackburn Jones. Sam related his decline of the invitation to the Army Reunion in Chicago, the letter from Colonel Tuttle and his desire to give a different toast to Grant. He had telegraphed Colonel Tuttle again. Sam was waffling about coming—the distance, the weather, the time it would involve, etc. [MTLE 4: 123].
October 29 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to L.T. Adams, enclosing the draft of a letter he’d written to George Baker, regarding the music-box shipment from Geneva, Switzerland [MTLE 4: 122].
October 28 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to William E. Strong (1808-1895), who invited him to speak at the Army Reunion in Chicago. The invite was sent to Elmira, and so was received late. Sam declined the invitation, at least initially.
“I wanted to see the General [Grant] again, anyway, and renew the acquaintance. He would remember me, because I was the person who did not ask him for an office” [MTLE 4: 121].
October 27 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to George Baker, the merchant who had sold Sam the music box in Geneva Switzerland. The wrong box arrived, damaged. He’d wanted the one shown to him that only used violin sounds and vox humana tones; what arrived had drums and bells and “tinklings.” The damage was slight and repairable.