May 9 Wednesday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote about Sam’s frustration at trying to see the President, of Orion’s letter and photograph, and of Sam’s play, Ah Sin [MTHL 1: 177].
May 8 Tuesday – Sam’s May 7 telegram to Parsloe ran on page one of the Washington National Republican [MTLE 2: 66]. Also in the Washington Evening Star (4-1) [MTP].
John Thomson Ford wrote Sam of the opening of Ah Sin and enclosed notices. His letter is on letterhead for the Treasurer’s Office of the National Theatre and Opera House:
May 7 Monday – Ah Sin opened in Washington for a week long trial before a New York premier.
May 6 Sunday – From Livy’s diary:
We are having a wonderfully restful Sunday morning. We neither of us went to church….
The children have been out gathering wild flowers and have brought me such a beautiful lot. I am going down now pretty soon to arrange them.
Mr. Clemens and I are sitting on the west balcony out of the billiard room, it is warm and pleasant, but Mr. Clemens has a terrible cold in the head—As I look down to the stream I see our four ducks—we have also six little ducks…[Salsbury 62].
May 5 Saturday – Sam wrote a short note from Hartford to his brother Orion in Keokuk about his private secretary’s carelessness at forgetting to send “the usual checks” for Orion. Sam enclosed them. He had a “very bad cold in the head” and couldn’t send details. “…the time is needed for swearing” [MTLE 2: 64, 65].
May 4–16 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles E. Perkins, his attorney and financial manager, asking for an accounting of interest on his various investments totaling $31,000. Sam complained that Fanny C. Hesse’s “accounts are so intolerably mixed,” that he couldn’t figure them out [MTLE 2: 62].
May 3 Thursday – The New York Daily Graphic ran “Mark Twain and His Chairman,” by “Gath,” (George Alfred Townsend) Sam’s comments on the actor Charles Parsloe [Scharnhorst, Interviews 13-14].
Address and location unknown
May 2 Wednesday – Based on his May 1 note to Howells, Sam arrived back in Hartford. Donald Hoffman, however, puts May 1 as the day Sam arrived home, with a cold and bronchitis [25].
Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk, Ia.
My Dear Brother:— / I enclose a picture of the leech that draws the blood that Col. Sellers makes.
May 1 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Baltimore to Howells.