January 23 Monday – Hubbard & Farmer bankers & brokers sent a statement with a credit balance of $11,640.95 [MTP].
David M. Drury wrote from NYC to solicit an autograph [MTP].
Worden & Co. Wrote advising purchase of 100 shares of Western Union at 80 [MTP].
January 23 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Louise A. Howland, wife of his old Nevada mining buddy, Robert M. Howland. Evidently the Howlands had been in New York and Sam apologized for being laid up with rheumatism.
January 23 Friday – Sam wrote from St. Paul to Livy, who’d asked if Pond ever failed to mail his letters. Sam didn’t think so and told the story of Orion taking one of his letters to the post box and when he got there forgetting why he’d gone, returning with the letter still in his pocket. Sam also related walking nine blocks to see the “ghost,” a “mysterious something on a school-house window pane,” which various people saw as various objects or persons.
January 23 Saturday – Ambrose Bierce’s short article in The Wasp (San Francisco) was a sneering discussion of Sam’s Jan. 18 speech at the Typothetae Dinner. Bierce felt Sam had lost his humor: “foremost among those desecrators of the tomb of Mark the Jester is Mark the Money-worm….”his last atrocious desecration” was the speech as reported by the Associated Press.
January 23 Monday – Wales R. McCormick wrote from Quincy, Ill. to Sam, thanking him for the $100 sent. “Your kind and welcome letter was rec’d in due time and I must say when I opened it and read the contents I had to give down and cry like a child.” He asked for a photo [MTP]. Note: Wales was a fellow apprentice for Joseph P. Ament’s Missouri Courier in Hannibal during the 1840s. See Vol. I, June.
January 23 Wednesday – Robert Underwood Johnson for Century Magazine wrote to Sam:”All right. We’ll go next week then, say Thursday or Friday. The vote will be moved (to set a day) on Monday Feb. 4” [MTP].
January 23 Thursday – Sam signed an affidavit in the House lawsuit case, outlining William Gillette’s early (1884) involvement with a possible P&P play in order to discredit Edward H. House’s claims [MTNJ 3: 544n185].
The Brooklyn Eagle carried an announcement on p.4 of February’s articles for Harper’s Magazine, Number 477. Among them is listed a story collected in 1893’s The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories:
January 23 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote again to Senator John P. Jones of Nevada, announcing he was “coming down to show” him how the whole typesetter stock affair might be successful without Jones having to do any personal soliciting, “either by voice or pen.”
Of course I meant to wait until the silver question was out of the way, but according to the papers that is to be kept alive by the enemy till the end of the session [MTP].
January 24 Saturday – In Elmira, Sam wrote to Howells. Sam asked if he went to the Tile Club dinner in New York.
January 24 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Mary Mason Fairbanks, who he wished to visit and judge the finished manuscript of P&P—(or was it another?)
January 24 Tuesday – A.P. Mitchell, NY stockbroker wrote, promoting a copper mine in Ariz. He claimed he’d made Sam’s acquaintance 10 years before in Pittsburgh [MTP]. Note: Clemens was in Pittsburgh during his 1872 lecture course on Jan. 11 to 16.
January 24 Wednesday – Sam wrote an aphorism to an unidentified person: “None genuine without this signature on the label: Yours Truly, SL Clemens Mark Twain Jan. 24, 1883” [Profiles in History, eBay item 230401504958, Nov. 19, 2009]. Note: Sam used this one several times, including Jan. 26, 1885.
Phillip Robinson wrote from Wisconsin “after a struggle with” his “better nature” sent Sam some sort of writing (the writing is quite illegible) [MTP].
January 24 Thursday – Edward L. Burlingame of Charles Scribner Co. wrote to ask Sam for Edward H. House’s address in Japan [MTP].
January 24 Saturday – Sam and Cable gave two readings at the The Grand Opera House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, a matinee and an evening performance. According to the Minneapolis Tribune, the matinee reading was “fairly attended” and there was a “full house” in the evening [Railton].
Jane Clemens wrote to Sam & Livy:
January 24 Sunday – William C. Prime wrote to Sam from New York, asking when Sam might be in town to discuss the McClellan book. Prime was representing General George B. McClellan’s widow for publishing the General’s memoirs. [MTP]. Note: Prime also wrote Dec. 31, 1885.
In 1908, Sam dictated this about Prime, who was James Hammond Trumbull’s brother-in law:
January 24 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote again to Rev. C.D. Crane of Newcastle, Maine asking him to:
Dear Sir:
Please leave out the “B.B.” book and all reference to it. This will save me from having to answer the letters of inquiry.
January 24 Tuesday – Lilly G. Warner wrote to Sam resigning her position as secretary of the Browning class [MTP].
January 24 Thursday – Joseph H. Twichell gave a historical address at a celebration of the 250th anniversary of Connecticut’s first constitution. The Hartford Courant of Jan. 25 called Twichell’s speech “Magnificent.” Sam was not there. See Jan. 25 to Twichell.
In Hartford Sam wrote to an unidentified person, declining to comply with a request.
January 24 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote a two-line decline to Clarence W. Bowen:
My hand is out, on miscellaneous work, from lack of practice, & so it would not be worth while to try [MTP].
January 24 Saturday – Sam left again for Washington likely on this day, he’d announced the day before in his letter to Senator Jones. On Jan. 25 Livy began her letter to Georgina Sullivan Jones, “Mr. Clemens has gone out of town for a few days.”
January 25 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to his sister, Pamela Moffett. He told of their plans to return to Hartford, and of his mother-in-law’s stomach ache.
January 25 Tuesday – Leo C. Evans wrote to Sam, clipping enclosed from Brooklyn Union Jan. 22, which claimed Evans called on Twain who talked of the “Obelisk” in reality being an “incomplete chimney”. Evans asked the address of Burdette’s manager. (Sam wrote on the env: “From a damned idiot”) [MTP]. See also Apr. 21, 1880 from Evans.
January 25 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood:
“If you and Roswell Smith are proposing a new magazine & Howell’s won’t take the editorship, why don’t you offer it to House?…Of course I have said nothing to him of the matter, & don’t know if he could drop his Japanese interests & his Japanese Consul-Generalship…” [MTP]. Note: Roswell Smith (1829-1892).
January 25 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Karl & Hattie Gerhardt, beginning the letter this day and finishing it on Feb. 6.
January 25 Sunday – Sam wrote from Minneapolis to Charles Webster, again about business matters—the bed clamp, Osgood’s statement, books sold, American Publishing Co., and money Webster needed, probably for continued production of Huck Finn. Sam ended with,
I ought to have staid at home & written another book. It pays better than the platform [MTP].