August 9 Monday – Dan De Quille wrote to the Enterprise that Bateman’s point had water on three sides and was foggy and breezy. Sam “is very indolent and after reading about a thousand pages [MS pages] said it was all right—he did not want to read any more” [MTL 6: 521]. Dan left sometime between this day and Aug. 12; he took a steamboat trip to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket [531n1].
August 3 Tuesday – Sam’s short piece “Mark Twain to Stay at Home” ran in the Hartford Courant [Courant.com].
Clara L. Kellogg (1842-1916) wrote from Clarehurst, Hudson River. “I am truly obliged to you, Mr. Clemens, for giving me the desired information. / Through your kindness I am now in possession of two photographs of your charming house” [MTP].
August 2 Monday – Sam’s letter of July 29? to Redpath found its way into the Boston Herald, appearing on Monday, Aug. 2 [MTL 6: 530].
August – The last of seven installments of “Old Times on the Mississippi” appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.
Sam inscribed a copy of Augustus John Hare’s Walks in Rome (1874): Saml. L. Clemens, Bateman’s Point, Newport, R.I, Aug., 1875. [Gribben 293].
July 31 Saturday – The Clemens family left Hartford to vacation at Bateman’s Point near Newport, Rhode Island. They stayed at Ridge Road and Castle Hill Avenue in an old farm on the well-used resort. Dan De Quille, who had been staying in the Union Hall Hotel in Hartford and writing his book with Sam’s help, also accompanied the family and stayed a week.
July 29? Thursday – In Hartford Sam wrote to James Redpath who had sent “customary annual lecture temptations!” Sam still did not want to lecture—at any price.
“All last winter I sat at home drunk with joy over every storm that howled along, because I knew that some dog of a lecturer was out in it” [MTL 6: 520-1].
July 26 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Orion, enclosing $82 requested as a loan. Orion was sending monthly detailed accounts of his chicken farm income and expenses and borrowing another $100 each time. Sam eyeballed a $25 expense for the rental of a pew in church and made a point of “principle” in this reply. “You might as well borrow money to sport diamonds with,” Sam admonished [MTL 6: 519].
July 23 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Pamela Moffett. Sam had utter disdain for the temperance activists, who he said blamed the maker of rum and not the drinker of it.
July 21 Wednesday –Sam submitted a synopsis of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Drama to the Library of Congress for copyright. Norton concludes that since the synopsis includes all of what would make up the published book that the “essential work had been done ten months earlier” [Writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 21].
July 20 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to James R. Osgood on the William F. Gill matter, that stopping legal action now was perhaps the best result they might obtain. Still,
“It seems a shame that a thief can go on & print 2000 copies of stolen goods & escape punishment through the weakness of the law” [MTL 6: 514].