January 1 Tuesday – Livy’s visitor book was signed by Carrie L. Brown, Frank T. Brown, and Ella F. Brown [MTP].

Moncure Conway wrote to wish Sam a happy new year and to say:

December 31 Monday – Charles E. Perkins wrote to advise of a credit to Sam’s account for $450 as “interest on your western loan.” He lists: W.S. Bland, M T Burwell, R Miller, and N Wethersby [MTP].

December 29 Saturday – Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to reassure Sam he hadn’t taken offense to his remarks at Whittier’s birthday dinner [MTP]. Note: on the env., “Publ. In part in Paine Biog, II pp 607-8.”

December 28 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, thanking him for his letter of Dec. 25 which “was a godsend.” Sam was particularly grateful for Howells:

“…consent that I write to those gentlemen; for you discouraged my hints in that direction that morning in Boston—rightly, too, for my offense was yet too new, then”

December 27 Thursday – In Hartford, Sam wrote individual apologies to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes for his embarrassing speech at Whittier’s Dec. 17 birthday party. He claimed he’d given the speech “innocently & unwarned,” and spoke of his mortification. He wrote of Livy’s “distress”; that:

December 25 Tuesday – Christmas –­ William Dean Howells wrote to Charles Dudley Warner about Sam’s letter of Dec. 23: “This morning I got a letter from poor Clemens that almost breaks my heart. I hope I shall be able to answer it in just the right way” [MTHL 2: 212n3].

He then wrote to Sam that being in the Atlantic would “…help and not hurt us many a year yet…” He then began to repair Sam’s wounds:

December 24 Monday – This is the date Sam gave as having returned Bret Harte’s I.O.U.’s totaling $3,000, only to receive an indignant reply that “permanently annulled the existing friendship.” As Duckett explains, “If Mark Twain’s date is correct, the return of the notes occurred within a week after Mark’s humiliation at the Whittier Birthday Dinner. During this period, Mark Twain felt increasingly penitent and friendless” [168].

Sam Bernard wrote to Sam; not found at MTP, but catalogued as UCLC 48597.

December 23 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells.

My sense of disgrace does not abate. It grows. I see that it is going to add itself to my list of permanencies—a list of humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years old, & which keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentancies.

December 22 Saturday – Sam’s “Letter of Regret” was read to the Seventy-Second Anniversary Celebration of the New England Society in the City of New York at Delmonico’s. Sam dated the letter Dec. 5 from Hartford (see Dec. 5 entry) [Fatout, MT Speaks 109].

December 21 Friday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote Sam a note announcing he’d sent him a present of several books. No mention was made of the Whittier birthday dinner [MTHL 1: 211].