June 20 Wednesday – Frank Fuller wrote a postcard from NYC. “I don’t know ‘Pitkins,’ but I have written Bowers to send me the bill for payment. Who overcharged? Pitkins? I’ll warrant it! ‘Tis true ‘tis Pitkins: Pitkins ‘tis, ‘tis true. If I am seem to see an overcharge in that bill when it comes, I’ll render Pitkins sad at heart” [MTP].
June 19 Tuesday – Sam answered an inquiry from James B. Pond about lecturing—couldn’t until “the reverses come. They haven’t arrived yet” [MTLE 2: 81]. Note: when money was abundant, Sam seldom wanted to lecture, unless occasionally for a charity he supported.
June 18 Monday – Frank Fuller wrote to Sam about his recent excursion to the north part of Long Island and of yacht sailing there. He wrote of H.C. Bowers again and was awaiting “the advent of the E.B. Grubb. We are not to be left without grub for 3 months it seems. I could stand that, but to have Bowers for the same period will drive me wild. Let us send him off to some remote isle of the sea, to try the sailing qualities of his thing” [MTP].
June 16 Saturday – Robert E. Beecher of Continental Life Ins. Co of Hartford wrote, pointing out that $335 plus interest was due on a $10,000 policy Sam had taken out in 1869 [MTP].
June 14 Thursday – Sam wrote from Quarry Farm to Howells, responding to a letter received. Sam thought Howells had made good terms for his new play. He consented to publishing the Bermuda travel article in the October issue of the Atlantic. He had revised the first two articles and began the third this day.
June 13 Wednesday – Little Clara’s fever had run its course, so Sam took the family up to Quarry Farm, a place “always cool, & still, & reposeful & bewitching” [MTLE 2: 80].
June 12 Tuesday – Sam wrote from the Langdon home in Elmira to Charles Perkins, his attorney and business consultant. Sam enclosed $20 and asked, “When is the dramatic vacation coming! It will be a relief to get Bergen down to $15 a week.” H.W. Bergen was the agent hired to handle and report receipts from stage plays.
June 11 Monday – Frank Fuller wrote (Bowers to Fuller June 9 & 10 enclosed),wanting Sam to tell him what to do about H.C. Bowers, and enclosing Bowers’ bill for $31.65 [MTP]. Note: “In 1877 Clemens’s old friend Frank Fuller persuaded him to invest in a company that he managed, the New York Vaporizing Company, which was financing H.C. Bowers to develop a new type of steam generator.
June 9 Saturday –William Dean Howells, on vacation in Conanicut, R.I., and “in a white fog that carries desolation to the soul,” wrote to ask Clemens for parts one and three of “Some Rambling Notes,” to put in type “at once.”
“The wretch who sold you that type-writer has not yet come to a cruel death. In the meantime he offers me $20.00 for it. I never could regard it as more than a loan, so I ask you whether I shall sell it at that price, or pass it along to you at Elmira” [MTHL 1: 181-2].
June 8 Friday – Clara Clemens’ third birthday.