March 20 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles D. Scully, who wrote Sam a month earlier. Sam had misplaced the letter, more than once. He made a mock-apology for “turning that article upon an unoffending people” and thanked Scully for a reading-circle naming their society after him. Which article Sam meant isn’t clear, nor is the identity of Scully, beyond being the member or leader of some reading-circle of Mark Twain fans.

March 22 Wednesday – Sam gave the “Roughing It in the Silver Regions” lecture, and “brilliantly inaugurated” the 1876 season of Kent Club lectures at Yale University. Tickets were “entirely by invitation” and “the Law School lecture room” was “filled to its utmost capacity by a delighted audience” [New Haven Morning Journal and Courier Mar. 22 and 23 p2 “Entertainments”].

March 24 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Mary Mason Fairbanks, who had just left his home for a visit. Sam ended the letter saying he was to lecture three times in New York “for a benevolent object next week,” and hoped “to go to [Thomas] Nast with Charlie [Langdon]” [MTP].

March 25 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Moncure Conway, now his official agent for literary works in England. Sam had just received Conway’s telegram from England. Conway asked for electrotypes of the pictures True Williams made for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

March 26 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to William Wright (Dan De Quille). He gave Dan some advice on selling stock and his plans to lecture in New York:

….If you sell at a loss, jam the remnant into stocks again & sail on, O ship of State, sail on, sail on! You needn’t take the trouble to ask me, when you think it best to sell, but just bang away.

March 28 Tuesday – In the afternoon, Sam gave the “Roughing It” lecture at Chickering Hall in New York, to raise money for Dr. John Brown of Scotland [MTPO notes with Mar. 16 to Redpath; New York Times Mar. 26, p7 “Amusements – Brief Mention”].

March 29 Wednesday – In the afternoon, Sam gave the “Roughing It” lecture at Chickering Hall in New York, to raise money for Dr. John Brown of Scotland [MTPO notes with Mar. 16 to Redpath; New York Times Mar. 26, p7 “Amusements – Brief Mention”].

NYC temperatures ranged from 52-35 degrees F. with 0.22 inches of rain [NOAA.gov].

March 30 Thursday – Sam gave a lecture titled, “Roughing It in the Land of the Big Bonanza” at the Academy of Music, in Brooklyn, New York [Brooklyn Eagle, Mar. 31, 1876, p3]. The newspaper stated the lecture was at 1:30 PM and the audience was small. Agent Redpath came out before Twain appeared and asked the audience to move closer to the better seats in the parquette.

March 31 Friday – In the afternoon, Sam gave the “Roughing It” lecture at Chickering Hall in New York, to raise money for Dr. John Brown of Scotland [MTPO notes with Mar. 16 to Redpath; New York Times Mar. 26, p7 “Amusements – Brief Mention”].

NYC temperatures ranged from 46-33 degrees F. with no rain [NOAA.gov].

April – Matthew Freke Turner wrote “Artemus Ward and the Humourists of America,” for New Quarterly Magazine. Turner didn’t care much for Sam, thought he and Harte deserved public criticism; that Sam’s was a “low humor, ridiculing sacred things, forced, long-winded, tedious in his parodies,” [Tenney 7].

April 2 Sunday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote a short note to Sam, sending a song (now unidentified) from Francis Boott (1813-1904), written “in a key suitable for your voice” [MTHL 1: 128]. Note: Boott composed at times under the pseudonym “Telford.”

April 3 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells about his proposed Atlantic review of Tom Sawyer:

“It is a splendid notice, & will embolden weak-kneed journalistic admirers to speak out, & will modify or shut up the unfriendly. To ‘fear God & dread the Sunday school’ exactly describes that old feeling which I use to have but I couldn’t have formulated it.”

April 4 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to an unidentified person, answering that he did not know Charles Webb’s date of birth [MTLE 1: 39].

April 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote to the editor of the Hartford Courant about heavy rains and a bad road, which had “disappeared.” The letter ran the next day.

April 6 Thursday – Annie A. Fields (Mrs. James T. Fields; 1834-1915) wrote in her diary of a visit by her and her husband to Hartford and of Sam:

April 7 Friday – Sam’s second letter to the Courant editor:

April 8 Saturday – Sam received a letter from Moncure Conway, which asked if Sam preferred to invest funds and take a percentage of the profits from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or go with a normal royalty payment. Clemens answered with a telegram and followed with a letter the next day [MTLE 1: 40].

April 9 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Moncure Conway answering Conway’s letter. Conway had negotiated with Chatto & Windus, the firm taken over by Andrew Chatto after John Camden Hotten’s death in 1873. W.E. Windus was a poet and a junior partner [Rasmussen 67]. Sam sought Livy’s advice and gave her answer to Conway:

April 11 Tuesday – Frank Bliss wrote to Sam, with statement showing $1,196.96 “paid to your credit”

Dr Clemens / I enclose statement of copyright to 1st Apl—if all correct will hand you ch for same when you come in send it to you if you prefer—

April 12 Wednesday – Sam wrote a postcard from Hartford to Bliss. He’d received Bliss’ statement but not the check. Sam also wanted the price estimates on the “Full set, of full plates, full size” for those cuts that would go “into that English size without cutting. Please hurry it up” [MTLE 1:42].

Phineas T. Barnum wrote to Sam asking what he should change on an enclosure (not in file) [MTP].

April 14 Friday - O.C. Greene wrote from Duluth, Minn. to relate a story found in the diary of a late friend in 1864 -- an old pepperbox and the head of a buffalo strung dangling from an old tree somewhere 10 miles west of the South Platte. Greene felt this did “justice to the aspersed reputation of Mr. Bemis” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env.

April 15 Saturday – Ainsworth R. Spofford confirmed copyright for Mark Twain’s Sketches New & Old entered July 21, 1875.

Francis Boott wrote from Cambridge, Mass apologizing for not sooner answering Sam’s note of Apr. 3, which reached him through Howells. “I was glad to learn that the little trifle I sent had given pleasure…” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Boott Composer”

April 16 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Moncure Conway. Evidently Bliss had given it to Sam straight about progress on the pictures, for Sam told Conway:

Just as I feared, Tom Sawyer is not yet ready to issue. Would not be ready for 2 weeks or longer, yet. Therefore the spring trade is lost beyond redemption. Consequently I have told Bliss to issue in the autumn & make a Boy’s Holiday Book of it.

April 17 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to John L. RoBards, now an attorney in Hannibal, responding to an old offer to move the coffins of his brother Henry and his father, John Marshall Clemens, from the Old Baptist Cemetery, a mile and a half from Hannibal, to the newer Mount Olivet Cemetery, southwest of town, which RoBards had founded.

April 18 Tuesday – The Hartford Courant announced:

Amateur Theatricals.