June 12 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to James Redpath. Sam agreed to start his lecture tour in the West if Redpath preferred. He asks what “Olive & those other dead beats” were charging (Olive Logan 1839-1909) [MTL 4: 407].
June 11 Sunday – Sam wrote a most unusual letter from Elmira to his mother, Jane Lampton Clemens—on many scraps of different kinds and colors written on both sides. This was Sam’s way of teasing his mother for writing on any old piece of paper she happened on.
June 10 Saturday – Sam wrote from Elmira to James Redpath & George L. Fall of the Boston Lyceum Lecture Bureau. Showing that he’d given the lecture circuit a great deal of thought from his past experiences. He wrote a list of seventeen items that he would or would not like for a lecture he’d written the day before. He was finally demanding higher prices, bigger towns and cities, and could name his preferences [MTL 4: 398-400].
June 9 Friday – Sam wrote a new lecture, “An Appeal in behalf of Extending the Suffrage to Boys” [MTL 4: 398].
June 7 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Orion and Mollie.
June 6 Tuesday – Sam was back in Elmira and began work on what would be Chapter 54 of Roughing It, which began by referring to a news item of June 3 in the New York Tribune.
“As I write, news comes in that broad daylight in San Francisco, some boys have stoned an inoffensive Chinaman to death, and that although a large crowd witnessed the shameful deed, no one interfered” [Roughing It, Ch.54].
June 5 Monday – A letter sold on eBay (Sept. 18, 2007; # 270167135431) that puts the Clemens family’s departure for Elmira at June 5. Though dated only “June 5,” the letter could only fit into this date for the entire period from 1870 through 1885:
June 4 Sunday – Sam attended services at Twichell’s church (Asylum Hill Congregational,) and had dinner with Conn. Governor Marshall Jewell (1825-1883) While in Hartford, Sam visited with Orion and Mollie and other Hartford friends [MTL 4: 395].
June 1 or 2 Friday – Sam arrived in Hartford and delivered another segment of the Roughing It manuscript [MTL 4: 395].
May 31 Wednesday – David Gray printed a notice in the Buffalo Courier of Sam’s new book to “be published in the fall and to appear simultaneously in England and America” [MTL 4: 394]. Note: the notice still did not include the title, which had yet to be formulated.