October 15 Tuesday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote to Theodore A. Bingham.
Dear Bingham: / Here is a far-wandering breath from over the fields of Long Ago. Ten days ago we found this letter among relics & mementoes of Susy & her Mother. It is from Susy to her Mother. It was an eager message out of a beating heart then; it is compliment, affection & gratitude uttered from the grave, now.
Yours sincerely
S. L. Clemens
October 16 Wednesday – The New York Times, Oct. 17, p.18, ran an article about humor in Ashcroft v. Hammond libel case, and a deposition of Sam’s read in court this day:
SWORN JEST BY MARK TWAIN.
———
Humorist Says He First Met John Hays Hammond in Jail—Ashcroft’s Suit.
October 17 Thursday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote a short note of recommendation for Mrs. Frances A. Ramsay as a stenographer “To whom it may concern”: I take the pleasure in saying that as a stenographer I found Mrs Ramsay competent & in all ways satisfactory” [MTP].
October 18 Friday – Joseph B. Gilder for Putnam’s Monthly wrote to again request Sam allow their sketch artist to draw Sam for the magazine; they’d done Choate and Howells; the artist didn’t require Clemens to sit but could walk around the room [MTP].
October 19 Saturday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote to Dorothy Quick in Plainfield, N.J.
October 20 Sunday – Alice Minnie Herts wrote for the Children’s Theatre to Miss Lyon, correcting a prior invitation [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Oct. 23”
October 21 Monday – A run on the Knickerbocker Trust Co. bank in N.Y.C. caused panic elsewhere, and the bank was forced to close its doors the next day. Sam had deposits of about $51,000 at the bank. J.P. Morgan would gain the help of fellow bankers, including John D. Rockefeller, to raise funds and import $100,000,000 in gold from Europe to restore confidence. See Oct. 22. H.H. Rogers and Katharine Harrison had originally recommended the Knickerbocker Trust Co. to Sam. A business slowdown from the resulting spreading panic lasted for months.
October 22 Tuesday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: Oh, it’s too dreadful. Every penny the King has, fifty one thousand dollars, is in the Knickerbocker Trust Co. and it has suspended payment. It has gone crashing into a terrible state. I was in town and read of the panic in the Times, and Ashcroft and I went to the bank, at 30th st and Fifth Avenue to see crowds of people there, with bank books in their quivering hands. And then I came back to Tuxedo to find the King in bed and so cheerful and beautiful and brave, and trying not to show his anxiety.
October 23 Wednesday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote to “Miss Anonyma.”
Dear Miss Anonyma: / This is to express my joy in the fact that you are able to go fishing, & to thank you very heartily for letting me share in the result. It is my purpose to call & say these things orally this afternoon, & so I am merely uttering them with the pen as a precaution, since it often happens—as you will have noticed—that the things we propose to do get interfered with & do not occur.
October 24 Thursday – Sam returned to 21 Fifth Ave. for the winter. Clara Clemens had been “domiciled in the house several days”; Isabel Lyon and servants would follow on Oct. 26 [Oct. 28 to Nunnally].