Day by Day entries are from Mark Twain, Day By Day, four volumes of books compiled by David Fears and made available on-line by the Center for Mark Twain Studies.  The entries presented here are from conversions of the PDFs provided by the Center for Mark Twain Studies and are subject to the vagaries of that process.    The PDFs, themselves, have problems with formatting and some difficulties with indexing for searching.  These are the inevitable problems resulting from converting a printed book into PDFs.  Consequently, what is provided here are copies of copies.  

I have made attempts at providing a time-line for Twain's Geography and have been dissatisfied with the results.  Fears' work provides a comprehensive solution to that problem.  Each entry from the books is titled with the full date of the entry, solving a major problem I have with the On-line site - what year is the entry for.  The entries are certainly not perfect reproductions from Fears' books, however.  Converting PDFs to text frequently results in characters, and sometimes entire sections of text,  relocating.  In the later case I have tried to amend the problem where it occurs but more often than not the relocated characters are simply omitted.  Also, I cannot vouch for the paragraph structure.  Correcting these problems would require access to the printed copies of Fears' books.  Alas, but this is beyond my reach.

This page allows the reader to search for entries based on a range of dates.  The entries are also accessible from each of the primary sections (Epochs, Episodes and Chapters) of Twain's Geography.  

Entry Date (field_entry_date)

January 13, 1876 Thursday

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January 13 Thursday – Miss C.C. Ranstead for the New York Infant Asylum wrote to ask Sam for a testimonial for Maria McLaughlin who had been a wet-nurse for one of the Clemens children. “She represents herself as a deserted wife and is here waiting for her confinement. / A paper of fine-cut tobacco was found in her pocket and a bottle of liquor in [word torn away].

January 16, 1876 Sunday

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January 16 Sunday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, sorry to hear he’d been sick. He declined an invitation from Sam for him and the wife to visit; Howells had company coming and was behind the eight ball on finishing “Private Theatricals,” a serialized article for the Atlantic. He added:

“I’m glad to hear that the Sketches have done so well. Get Bliss to hurry out Tom Sawyer. That boy is going to make a prodigious hit” [MTHL 1: 121].

January 17, 1876 Monday 

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January 17 Monday  Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood. He wanted a piece of William F. Gill’s hide this time, and told Osgood to pay the lawyers and go after him in court. Sam would go it alone if he had to, and wanted from Gill at least:

January 19, 1876 Wednesday 

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January 19 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Jerome B. Stillson, former correspondent for the New York World, who had written from Denver, where he was now in the real estate business, asking Sam for an autograph. In 1877 Stillson would move back to New York and join the staff of the New York Herald, where he stayed until his death in 1880 [MTLE 1: 14].

January 21, 1876 Friday

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January 21 Friday – Orion Clemens wrote to Sam.

Keokuk, January 21, 1876.

My Dear Brother:—

      Are you willing to lend me five hundred dollars a year for two years, while I try to get into the practice of law?

Your Brother,

Orion.

P. S. I can succeed [MTPO].

January 22, 1876 Saturday

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January 22 Saturday – Sam’s article “A Literary Nightmare”  ran in the Hartford Courant on page one:

Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following verses, and see if he can discover anything harmful in them? [Courant.com]. (See Jan? entry for verse)

January 24, 1876 Monday 

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January 24 Monday – Sam read his newly drafted story, “Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” to the Monday Evening Club at his home. This was his third presentation to the club [Monday Evening ClubTwichell remembered the story as “serious in its intent though vastly funny and splendidly, brilliantly read.” The tale was a surreal and dark treatment that questioned the origin and function of the conscience.

January 25, 1876 Tuesday

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January 25 Tuesday  Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood, again about the legal matter of watching William Gill, who had made a habit of plagiarizing and exploiting authors. Sam’s intention was to sue Gill for trademark infringement for using the name “Mark Twain,” a rather novel legal strategy at that time.

January 26, 1876 Wednesday

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January 26 Wednesday – M.M.B. wrote to Sam, clippings enclosed: “A friend sends me the inclosed slip-cut from ‘The Tennessean Observer,’ published at Fernandina, Florida. I thought you could appreciate it is an illustration that truth is stranger than fiction” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “ ‘Tenneseean’ Journalism”

January 27, 1876 Thursday

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January 27 Thursday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, still unable to come down for a quick visit on Saturday, but he was “getting the better” of his “literary misery.” Howells reported praise of Sam’s article in the Feb. Atlantic, “Literary Nightmare” :

January 28, 1876 Friday

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January 28 Friday  Sam wrote a post card from Hartford to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who had been “captured” and confessed his love for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Sam was “delighted!” so much so that he felt healthy again, after being “in the doctor’s hands for 2 months…” [MTLE 1: 16].

Sam also wrote a short note to Miss Higgins (unknown). Sam added a PS:

January 29, 1876 Saturday

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January 29 Saturday – Sam’s notes in Hyppolyte Taine’s The Ancient Regime (1876) state that he finished reading the book on this day [Slotta 32]. This was a major sourcebook for both P&P and CY (See also Sept. 10 entry).

February 1876

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February  William Dean Howells published a review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the Atlantic. Howells gave Sam high praise for the boy-mind presentation “with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree.” Howells called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a book “full of entertaining character, and of the greatest artistic sincerity.” The only thing off about the review was the unintended timing, caused by the long delay in the book’s publication.

February 2, 1876 Wednesday

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February 2 Wednesday – Sam inscribed a copy of Franz Ahn’s (1796-1865) Ahn’s First German Book (1873): “S.L. Clemens, Hartford, Feb. 2, ’76” [Gribben 13].

Mary Mason Fairbanks wrote from Camden, N.J.

My Dear Samuel / “A blue trip slip for a six cent fare”—you see I have caught the infection. The last Atlantic brought it into our family and since then it has spread throughout the house.

February 3, 1876 Thursday

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February 3 Thursday – Joe Twichell wrote from Hartford.

Dear Mark, / I have just refused to ask you to lecture or read in a case in which I would have hardly refused anything I could do but that. Mrs. G. F. Davis of Washington St, representing the Orphan Asylum now caught in a pecuniary crisis, is the party I turned away, not without regret and, I confess, considerable compunction. But I have sworn not to let my personal relations to you be utilized in that way. I had to do it in self defense, and in decency.

February 4, 1876 Friday 

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February 4 Friday – Sam wrote to Cashier of the First National Bank, Hartford, asking for a New York draft of $1,500 payable to William Wright (Dan De Quille) and to charge his “Personal” account. The bank’s cashier at this time was Charles S. Gillette [MTPO]. (See Feb. 8 entry.)

February 8, 1876 Tuesday

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February 8 Tuesday  Sam wrote from Hartford to William Wright (Dan De Quille), sending him $1,500 to invest in:

“California or Con. Virginia at such time as John Mackey thinks is best, & when he says sell, sell, whether at a loss or a profit, without waiting to swap knives” [California and Consolidated Virginia were Comstock silver mine stocks]

February 9, 1876 Wednesday 

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February 9 Wednesday  Sam wrote from Hartford to Mollie Fairbanks, daughter of Mary Mason Fairbanks. Sam idealized girlhood, as his later treatment of “Angel Fish would show. Mollie had just had her “coming out” to society party, and Sam reflected:

February 10, 1876 Thursday

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February 10 Thursday – Marvin Henry Bovee wrote to Sam, flyer enclosed, once again (see Bovee’s Apr. 7, 1875) appealing for a visit and contribution by Clemens to the cause of ending capital punishment. Sam wrote on the letter, “From that inextinguishable dead beat who has infested legislatures for 20 years trying to put an end to capital punishment” [MTP].