• October 13, 1879 Monday 

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    October 13 Monday  Sam wrote from Elmira to Frederick Schweppe, an Elmira decorator, a draft for $250 [MTLE 4: 113]. Livy had engaged Schweppe to redo the walls and ceilings in the Hartford, Farmington Avenue house [Willis 129].

  • October 15, 1879 Wednesday

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    October 15 Wednesday – C.H. Brainard wrote from Boston to Sam, enclosing a photo of a bust of Whittier by Preston Powers, Florence, Italy. Brainard solicited Sam for a contribution to place the bust (cost $900) in the Boston Public Library [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Whittier photo”.

  • October 17, 1879 Friday 

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    October 17 Friday  Sam’s article “Our Georgia Visitors” ran in the Hartford Courant [Camfield, bibliog.].

    C. Jensen, custom officer wrote from Stubbekøbing, Denmark to ask for an autograph [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Preserve this remarkable letter”; though English is clearly not the writer’s first language, nothing explains Twain’s envelope comment.

  • October 21, 1879 Tuesday 

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    October 21 Tuesday  The Clemens family left Elmira and Quarry Farm and went to New York, staying a day or two before leaving for Hartford [MTLE 4: 111]. NoteSusan Crane in a 1911 letter to Paine gave the date the Clemens family left Quarry Farm as Oct.

  • October 24, 1879 Friday

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    October 24 Friday  After a seventeen month absence, the Clemens family returned home to Hartford and their Farmington Avenue house [MTLE 4: 111, 115]. From Twichell’s journal:

    “Dear Mark Twain and his family are home again. We called on them in the evening. It seems only yesterday that we parted in Switzerland” [Yale, copy at MTP].

  • October 25, 1879 Saturday

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    October 25 Saturday – Richard Stanley Tuthill (1841-1920) wrote from Chicago, on The Illinois Club notepaper to invite Sam to the annual meeting of the Army of Tennessee Nov. 12-13. Would Sam agree to be on the program? [MTP]. Note: he did agree and gave the famous “Babies” speech.

  • October 27, 1879 Monday

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    October 27 Monday  Sam wrote from Hartford to George Baker, the merchant who had sold Sam the music box in Geneva Switzerland. The wrong box arrived, damaged. He’d wanted the one shown to him that only used violin sounds and vox humana tones; what arrived had drums and bells and “tinklings.” The damage was slight and repairable.

  • October 28, 1879 Tuesday 

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    October 28 Tuesday  Sam wrote from Hartford to William E. Strong (1808-1895), who invited him to speak at the Army Reunion in Chicago. The invite was sent to Elmira, and so was received late. Sam declined the invitation, at least initially.

    “I wanted to see the General [Grant] again, anyway, and renew the acquaintance. He would remember me, because I was the person who did not ask him for an office” [MTLE 4: 121].

  • October 30, 1879 Thursday

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    October 30 Thursday  Sam wrote from Hartford to Joseph Blackburn Jones. Sam related his decline of the invitation to the Army Reunion in Chicago, the letter from Colonel Tuttle and his desire to give a different toast to Grant. He had telegraphed Colonel Tuttle again. Sam was waffling about coming—the distance, the weather, the time it would involve, etc. [MTLE 4: 123].

  • November 5, 1879 Wednesday 

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    November 5 Wednesday  Sam wrote from Hartford to U.D. at the W.K. Carson Co.Baltimore, Maryland. U.D. had evidently asked for a biographical sketch. Sam referred him to the listing in Men of the Time, by Routledge, or Allibone’s Dictionary of Authors  [MTLE 4: 125].

  • November 6, 1879 Thursday

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    November 6 Thursday  Sam wrote from Hartford to Hjalmar Boyesen of Ithaca, New York. Boyesen and family had been in Paris at the same time as the Clemens family. Sam listed the letters he had written Boyesen after being informed by a “fine young fellow” named Bacon that he hadn’t answered Boyesen’s letters. Sam wrote that their “unpacking room looks like a furniture hospital” [MTLE 4: 127].

  • November 8, 1879 Saturday

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    November 8 Saturday  Sam left Hartford with George Warner, both bound for Chicago [MTLE 4: 130]. He stopped in New Yorkwhere Dan Slote told him that the scrapbook business was “booming—can’t fill the orders” [134].

  • November 9, 1879 Sunday

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    November 9 Sunday  Sam wrote en route (“In a hotel-car, 300 miles west of Philadelphia, 11.30 Sunday morning”) from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, to Livy. He would telegraph her from Pittsburgh, he wrote.

  • November 11, 1879 Tuesday

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    November 11 Tuesday  Sam wrote two letters from the Palmer House in Chicago to Livy. The first letter recounted activities of the prior day (Nov. 10). The second letter told of meeting…

    “…an elderly German gentleman named Raster, who said his wife owed her life to me—hurt in the Chicago fire & lay menaced with death a long time, but the Innocents Abroad kept her mind in a cheerful attitude.”

  • November 13, 1879 Thursday

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    November 13 Thursday – Sam delivered a “snapper” in his speech, “The Babies” (See Fatout, MT Speaking 131-3) for the Army of the Tennessee Reunion Banquet, Palmer House, Chicago, Illinois—the snapper that finally broke Grant’s cast-iron expression into waves of laughter.