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].

December 20 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Follen Adams (1842-1918) in Boston. Sam thanked Adams and wrote that “several of the pieces are familiar to me, & I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of the rest” [MTLE 2: 206]. Adams had sent his Leedle Yawcob Strauss, and Other Poems (1878; preface dated 1877) [Gribben 7].

December 19 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion, who had given Sam an idea for a book (see Dec. 15 from Orion). Sam’s answer sounded more like a put-upon father than a brother, which is the way he often answered Orion. But then, Sam did not suffer fools lightly.

“Dr Bro—If I write all the books that lie planned in my head, I shall see the middle of the next century. I can’t add another, until after that. I couldn’t write from another man’s ideas, anyway. But go ahead & write it yourself—that is, if you can drop other things” [MTLE 2: 205].

December 18 Tuesday – Sam was still in Boston. (See Dec. 20 entry to Starbird.) Sam and William Dean Howells did some window-shopping. Howells sent Sam a one-liner, addressed to the Parker House: “All right, you poor soul!” Sam returned to Hartford either this day or Dec. 19, when he wrote Orion. Charles E. Perkins wrote to advise Sam he’d credited him $360 interest from Burnham [MTP].

December 17 Monday – Sam gave his infamous dinner speech at John Greenleaf Whittier’s birthday dinner, Hotel Brunswick, Boston, Mass. [Fatout, MT Speaking 110-4]. The speech was a rambling burlesque about three tramps in the mining country foothills of the Sierras pretending to be Holmes, Emerson and Longfellow. The sketch fell flat and cold on the august assembly.

December 15 Saturday – Orion wrote from Keokuk: “Your letter of 11th with the notices for the papers received. You will see from my last letter that they are not necessary, as the case was probably that of a book agent stuck with some of Max Adeler’s books and trying to work them off.” He suggested that Sam take his “Kingdom of Sir John Franklin” sketch and “use it as a skeleton or as memoranda, expand it into a book…” [MTP].