May 21 Tuesday – Bill paid to Horace C. Deming, flour & grain dealer, for $11.40 [MTP].

May 20 Monday – Sam wrote “a hasty note” from Elmira to Mollie Clemens to hire a cook who had been referred, to put a cot in Sam’s study and that they would start home “about Thursday or Friday noon. Will telegraph” [MTL 5: 93].

May 18 Saturday – Screamers, a small collection of Mark Twain’s stories published without Sam’s full approval, was reviewed in the London Spectator. Welland writes and quotes from the review: 

May 17 Friday – Livy and Sam wrote from Elmira to niece Annie E. Moffett. Livy sent some silk material for Annie to use and Sam denied newspaper reports that he’d made a fortune off his two books and lectures. “So you see we are not nearly so rich as the papers think we are” [MTL 5: 92].

Orion Clemens wrote a long reply to Sam’s May 15 about a possible lawsuit against Elisha Bliss.

May 16 Thursday – John Henry Riley wrote to Sam: “Yours of Cleveland 13th inst. is recd today. I have managed to pass over my birthday (15th inst.) which is usually a turning point in my affairs. I am now taking electro-galvanic application with the view of arresting the progress of the disease and Dr. Grier expressed himself satisfied with the result of the first application” [MTP].

May 15 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Orion and Mollie Clemens.

“The new baby is as fat as butter, & wholly free from infelicities of any kind. She weighed 4 ¼ pounds at birth—weighs about 9 now.”

May 14 Tuesday – The Clemens family returned to Elmira [MTL 5: 86].

May 13 Monday – In Cleveland, Clemens wrote to John Henry Riley, letter not extant but referred to in Riley’s May 16 reply.

May 10 Friday – Routledge & Sons received 6,000 copies of Mark Twain’s Sketches from their printers [MTL 5: 73n4].

May 9 Thursday – Sam wrote from Cleveland to his baby daughter Susy.