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)

April 12-15, 1906 Sunday

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April 12-15 Sunday – Sometime during this period Sam left a calling card at Charlotte Teller Johnson’s house: “I have come to ask after your cold, & to see if you are up & about: in which case can you see me in your workroom instead of venturing out into the air to come to my house? I hope you are well enough to take that risk, but naturally I am not in a position to guess intelligently. / SLC” [MTP].

April 13, 1906 Friday

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April 13 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote a note of introduction for Maxim Gorky to Josiah Flint Willard at 119 Waverly Place, N.Y.C., replying to Willard’s Apr. 12:

“Dear Maxim Gorky: / M . Willard, the bearer of this, begs me to give him a line of introduction to you & I comply with his request in the conviction that you will find him interesting, since, like yourself, he has seen the seamy side of life & has had adventures” [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Charlotte Teller Johnson.

April 14, 1906 Saturday

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April 14 Saturday – Four autographed notes by Clemens on a four-page letter by an unspecified reporter of the NY Times, requesting his opinion on Maxim Gorky’s trip to America to raise funds in the cause of Russian emancipation. Sam refused to be interviewed but answered written questions with written answers, with the priviso that they would be printed verbatim, if at all.  Two of the notes follow:

April 15, 1906 Sunday

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April 15 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied with an aphorism to Carolyn Wells: “It is easier for a needle to go through a camel’s eye than for a rich woman to sprain her ancle & keep it out of the papers. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / April 15, 1906 / With greetings & good wishes to Carolyn Wells” [MTP].

The New York Times ran a front-page scandal story involving Maxim Gorky; Mark Twain’s remarks on helping Russia were included:

GORKY AND ACTRESS ASKED TO QUIT HOTELS

She Is Not Mme. Gorky, Though He Calls Her So.

April 16, 1906 Monday

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April 16 Monday – In N.Y.C. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Nikolai V. Chaikovsky. “Mr. C asks me to write for him and say that he is not going to take any public notice of the man Spiridovitch. He is not too troubled about the matter” [MTP]. Note: Alexander Spiridovitch (1873-1952), Russian police general. In 1906 Spiridovitch was assigned to a detail guarding the residences of Czar Nicholas II.

April 17, 1906 Tuesday

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April 17 Tuesday – Sam wrote to an unidentified person about Benjamin Chapin, who performed on stage as Abraham Lincoln. This letter appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Apr. 22, 1906 in “Lincoln Lives in Ohio Actor.”

April 18, 1906 Wednesday

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The Great San Francisco Earthquaje

April 18 Wednesday – The New York Times, Apr. 19, p. 14, “Sutton Beats Slosson by Superior Billiards,” again mentioned Mark Twain’s evening at the international billiards tourney at Madison Square Garden:

April 19, 1906 Thursday

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April 19 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote a note for Gertrude Natkin (and probably her mother): “Please admit these friends of mine by the stage door, & greatly oblige” [MTP].

In the evening Sam gave his “last speech” at Carnegie Hall in the cause for aid to earthquake- stricken San Francisco. New York newspapers covered the event, including the Times, Apr. 20, p.11.

MARK TWAIN APPEALS FOR THE ‘SMITTEN CITY’

Begs the Audience at His Last Public Lecture to be Liberal.

A UNIQUE TALK ON FULTON

April 21, 1906 Saturday

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April 21 Saturday – In the afternoon Sam presided over a meeting at the Casino Theatre to organize help for the city of San Francisco. The New York Evening World, p. 2, reported:

CALIFORNIANS ARRANGE TO GIVE AID TO VICTIMS.
———
Meeting at Casino Under Auspices of Mrs. Oelrichs and Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt, jr., Presided Over by Mark Twain.

April 22, 1906 ca.

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April 22 ca. – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Ella and Margaret McMahon. “I must send you both a word of sympathy in these days of your bereavement, although I know that words cannot comfort the stricken any more than they can convey the sympathy of the one who writes them”: [MTP]. Note: object of sympathy not specified.

April 23, 1906 Monday

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April 23 Monday – The New York Times, p.12, “Billiard Benefit Plans” announced a billiard benefit for San Francisco at the concert hall of Madison Square Garden on the following evening. Mark Twain had been asked to make “a brief address.”

The Old Guard was to parade with a following banquet at the Hotel Astor. Rain cut the parade short but the banquet went off as planned, with Mark Twain making a characteristic late arrival. The New York Times, Apr. 24, p. 7, reported:

OLD GUARD CELEBRATE THEIR 80TH BIRTHDAY
———

April 24, 1904 Tuesday

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April 24 Tuesday – In the evening at Madison Square Garden, Sam made some brief remarks at a billiard exhibition of trick shots for the benefit of San Francisco.  

The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition. Once, when I was an underpaid reporter in Virginia City, whenever I wished to play billiards I went out to look for an easy mark. One day a stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor. I looked him over casually. When he proposed a game, I answered, “All right.”

April 25, 1906 Wednesday

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April 25 Wednesday – The New York Times, p. 13, “What is Doing in Society” included a squib about Mark Twain and Miss Ida M. Tarbell to be the guests of honor at a May 1 evening celebration in the Gibson Studios for the tenth anniversary of the incorporation of the College Women’s Club. Fatout does not list his appearance; newspapers give the event as May 4, when Sam was under doctor’s orders “to remain in bed two or three days” [May 4 to Teller].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Jean, noon. Eve.” [MTP TS 68].

April 26, 1906 Thursday

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April 26 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote congratulations to Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Lilian W. Aldrich in Ponkapog, Mass.

I rejoice with you.. This is from habit, temperament, training, tradition—that straitjacket which keeps its grip on us always & won’t allow our common sense any little liberty to work. And I rejoice with you in earnest, I can’t help it. Oh, I know—I know. I have stood where Talbot stands, & was happy: happy, & not afraid. What riches! And now—what poverty! Life is a silly invention, an immeasurable brutality. Now, then——

April 28, 1906 Saturday

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April 28 Saturday – Sam wrote to Gertrude Natkin, his letter not extant but referred to in Natkin’s reply of early May. From the context of her reply, Sam asked her if she would like to have an autographed photo of himself for her room [MTP].

April 30, 1906 Monday

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April 30 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Robert Reid.

I keep thinking about that picture—I cannot get it out of my mind. I think—no, I know—that it is the most moving, the most eloquent, the most profoundly pathetic picture I have ever seen. It wrings the heart to look at it, it is so desolate, so grieved. It realizes San Francisco to us as words have not done & cannot do. I wonder how many women can look upon it & keep back their tears—or how many unhardened men, for that matter?  [MTP].

May 1906

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May – Poultney Bigelow wrote a short note to Sam from Malden, N.Y.. “Bless you—best of Sublunary Benefactors—long years to you—full years—happy years for the sake of your fellow humans” [MTP].

Human Life published “Mark Twain—Dean of Our Humorists,” by William A. Graham, p. 1- 2. Tenney: “A popular, appreciative account, chiefly of the Hartford years. Mentions conversations with MT and hearing him speak at a Thanksgiving-Day dinner at the YMCA in 1888 o 1889” [“A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 190].

May 3, 1906 Thursday

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May 3 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Mr. Clemens’s inspiration for this morning. ‘Get up a stench in England about the Gospel. Have 200 copies printed anonymously there, uncopyrighted, too” [MTP TS 69].

May 4, 1906 Friday

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May 4 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam, down with bronchitis again, wrote to Charlotte Teller Johnson.

I have your note, dear lady Charlotte, & of course I say “Yes”—quite willingly, too.

Professor Giddings’s article is remorselessly severe, but it is all good sense. The editorial is sane, also. The whole case is as pitiful as it can be—that of those poor Gorkys, I mean.

May 5, 1906 Saturday

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May 5 Saturday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam inscribed an etching to Edward Lauterbach: “It is not best to use our morals on weekdays, Edward, it gets them out of repair for Sunday. Your friend / Mark Twain / May 5, 1906.” [MTP].  

Sam also wrote to Oren Root, Jr., an officer in the Kingsbridge Railway Co.

May 7, 1906 Monday

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May 7 Monday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Otis Skinner (1858-1942), actor and a star since the mid 1890s. Clemens came to the defense of Mary Lawton:  

Dear little Otis:

So you have discharged her! Your reasons have greatly interested me. To-wit: She is too tall. But she is no taller than she was when you engaged her.

 She is too large. But she is no larger now than she was then.

 Her voice isn’t right. But it is the same voice that was satisfactory before.