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.
June 7 Thursday – The Clemenses rode the train ten hours and arrived at the Langdon home in Elmira.
Henry Whitney Cleveland (1836-1907) wrote from N.Y.C. the first of six letters to Clemens, who became irritated with him to the point of calling him the “Reverend D—d tramp.”
June 6 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells. The move to Elmira had been delayed a day, but Sam wrote they were leaving that day.
July 13 or 14, 1877: Sam traveled to New York [MTLE 2: 94]. He returned to Elmira August 3rd.
August 7, 1877: The Clemens family possibly went to Ithaca, New York for a two-day visit to Hjalmar H. Boyesen and family. They were back in Elmira by Aug. 11.
June 5 Tuesday – In Hartford in the evening, Sam attended William H. Gillette’s performance at Seminary Hall. The Courant of June 6, p.2 reported the event: