October 19 Wednesday – In Buffalo, Clemens wrote to Francis P. Church:
I am so stupid. I forgot that it will be two or three weeks before I can see whether you are going to want that portrait & burlesque or not—so you must sit right down & write me even if you have to delay your dinner a minute or two. Will you?
October 2 Saturday – Sam’s signed article ran in the Express: “The Latest Novelty Mental Photographs.” A list of questions were received that were to “ferret out the most secret points of a man’s nature.” Here are a few: What is your idea of Happiness? – Finding all the buttons on. / Your idea of Misery? – Breaking an egg in your pocket. / What do you believe to be your Distinguishing Characteristic? – Hunger. / What is your Aim in life? – To endeavor to be absent when my time comes. / What is your Motto?
October 20 Thursday – An earthquake struck Buffalo at about 5 p.m., and “lasted only thirty or fourty seconds. Church steeples and chandeliers swayed. Walls of buildings shook, windows shattered, and furniture moved across floors” [Reigstad 171].
October 21 Friday – An article attributed to Sam, “The Libel Suit,” was printed in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 246].
Mortimer Neal Thomson (Q.K. Philander Doesticks, P.B.) wrote from NY.
I don’t believe you’ve forgotten me, and I don’t want you to put on airs and pretend you have, just because I’m going to remind you of a promise.
October 22 Saturday – Francis P. Church of the Galaxy wrote:
“Dear Twain: / The portrait is all right. I will give it to the engraver immediately.
We wont talk about your giving up at the end of the year. It is something not to be even thought of for a moment” [MTPO]. Note: a doodled portrait of King William of Prussia; see Oct. 18.
October 23 Saturday – Sam’s article, “The Legend of the Capitoline Venus,” was published in the Express. This is one of Sam’s earliest in the paper. The title was shortened to “The Capitoline Venus” upon reprinting in Sketches, New and Old (1875) [Wilson 177]. This story was similar to his Innocents Abroad material involving the public’s gullibility to artistic hoaxes.
October 26 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss asking if he thought his articles in the Galaxy had hurt book sales. He had notified Frank Church at the Galaxy that his year would be up with April’s edition. Even though Sam had expounded firmly that he was done lecturing, now he said, “I half expected to lecture a little next year” [MTL 4: 212]
October 27 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Emily A. Severance in Cleveland. The Severances had been cabin mates on the Quaker City. Sam had sent them a copy of Innocents and answered her thanks. Sam wrote he expected to be in Cleveland the next day on the way to Pittsburgh, but a derailment on Oct.
October 27 Thursday – Edward Eggleston (1837-1902), in an article in The Independent said he was amused by Sam’s sketch in the Galaxy, but more impressed by a poem of Helen Hunt’s [Tenney 3].
October 28 Thursday – James Redpath wrote to Sam: “We offered the date indicated by your telegram, by telegraph: but it did not suit / There is therefore no change in the schedule given before” [MTP].
October 28 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss, asking him to send or have sent a copy of Innocents Abroad to “Mortimore Thomson, ‘better known,’ (as they have the thrice-infernal fashion of saying of me,) as ‘Q.K. Philander Doesticks, P.B.’ ” [MTL 4: 215].
Clemens also wrote to the secretary of Goethean Literary Society, Lancaster, Penn.
October 29 Friday – Sam left Elmira for Pittsburgh. See locket picture of Livy dated this day by MTP.
October 29 Saturday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss. Sam disrespected one “Colonel” Albert S. Evans.
October 30 Saturday – Sam arrived in Pittsburgh in the afternoon, for his Nov. 1 lecture. He was the guest of honor at a banquet at McGinley’s Dining Saloon, on Wood Street, given by the lecture committee of the Mercantile Library Association [MTL 3: 382n2]. Lorch says it was an “oyster supper” [105].
October 31 Sunday – Sam continued the Oct. 30 letter to Livy:
“I walked around town this morning with a young Mr. Dean, a cousin of Wm D. Howells, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He kindly offered to give me a letter of introduction to Mr. Howells, but I thanked him sincerely & declined, saying I had a sort of delicacy about using letters of introduction…”
October 31 Monday – Sam wrote again from Buffalo to Dr. Iretus G. Cardner that the letter Sam received did not indicate any money Sam had sent [MTL 4: 219].
October 4 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Fredonia, New York to James Redpath concerning reprints and use of the Paris map, asking Redpath to “get up a bargain” with Louis Prang (1824-1909), a well-known map maker [MTL 4: 201-4].
October 5 Wednesday – The Fredonia Censor for this date reported Sam and Livy’s visit.
Samuel S. Clemens (Mark Twain) and wife are spending a few days with his mother and sister, who came here to reside last spring. He is engaged in preparing another work for the press.—His “Innocents Abroad” has had a sale of over 70,000. Its great popularity will prepare the way for an extensive sale of the book which he is now writing.
October 7 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to an unidentified person about a humorous article sent burlesquing Baron Alexander von Humboldt. Sam wrote he would lecture in Pittsburgh on Nov. 1 and then lecture in New England until Jan. 15 [MTL 3: 366-7].
October 8 Friday – Sam wrote to the Polar Star Mason Lodge of St. Louis, asking for a “demit,” an official release of membership to non-affiliate status [Jones 366]. Note: this letter not found in the MTP letters, and specifies Sam wrote from Buffalo, when he was in Elmira on this date, so the date is suspect.
October 8 Saturday – Sam’s article, “Curious Relic for Sale,” which had appeared in the October edition of the Galaxy, was printed in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 233].
October 8–13? Thursday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss, about Hubert Howe Bancroft, West Coast agent for Innocents Abroad.
October 9 Saturday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Schuyler Colfax, vice president under Grant. Colfax was returning to Washington from a visit to the Pacific states. Sam asked for letters of recommendation for Charles Langdon and Darius Ford, who were traveling to the West Coast.
October 9 Sunday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to James Redpath. He’d given up putting the additions on his Paris map, since it had been printed and reprinted several times and he’d not copyrighted it. Sam began to think about lecturing again [MTL 4: 206].
September 1 Wednesday – Sam’s article “The Prodigal Son Returns” appeared in the Express [McCullough 28]. Sam wrote from Buffalo to Alphonso Miner Griswold (1834-1891), who wrote under the pen name, “Fat Contributor,” of his desire to get out of all lectures for this season. Griswold was reviewed as a “colorless copy of Mark Twain” [MTL 3: 324]. Sam also wrote to Livy.
September 10 Friday – Sam’s letter to Livy of Sept. 8 shows he proposed to start for Elmira “Friday night at 11—& start back at same hour on Monday night.”