Washington Letters – Deal with Elisha Bliss – New York to Panama to San Francisco More Lectures & Goodbye to Virginia City – Goodbye to San Francisco - Panama, New York & Hartford – Elmira, Rejected Proposal and the Courtship Began - Sam met Joe Twichell – “Vandals” Lectures Hither and Yon
1868 – Camfield lists a story printed posthumously in Mark Twain’s Satires and Burlesques (1967): “The Story of Mamie Grant, Child Missionary” [bibliog.].
Sam began work on “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” sometime during the year, and repeatedly returned to it in 1869, 1870, 1873, 1878, 1881, 1883, 1893,and 1906 [MTNJ 1: 241]. Note: Camfield cites 1869 as the year Sam began this work [bibliog.]. The work was finally published in Harper’s Magazine in Dec. 1907 and in book form in Oct. 1909.
March 7 Saturday – Sam’s MARK TWAIN’S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON, NUMBER IX dated Feb. 1868 ran in the Enterprise. Sections included: “Washington Rascality,” “The Delegation,” “Postmaster,” “Sandwich Islands Reciprocity,” “Miscellaneous” (McGrorty,) “Hay,” “Wood,” “Rough,” and
Impeachment.
March 8 Sunday – On or about this date Sam received a negative reply from the editors of the Alta to his request to reuse the Holy Land letters in his new book [MTL 2: 200].
Sam’s “Holy Land Excursion. Letter from Mark Twain Number Forty-five” dated Sept. 1867 at “Jerusalem” ran in the Alta California [McKeithan 266-72].
March 8–10 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Washington, D.C. to his mother and family. Paine paraphrases this letter, evidently not extant, about Sam’s decision to travel to San Francisco and talk to “those Alta thieves face to face” [MTB 361]. He knew Colonel John McComb and Frederick MacCrellish well.
March 9 Monday – The Washington Evening Star announced:
“Mark Twain”—Clemens—has left Washington for California to make arrangements for the publication of his work [Muller 137].
March 10 Tuesday – Sam traveled to New York, where he wrote Mary Mason Fairbanks:
“I am so glad of an excuse to go to sea again, even for three weeks. My mother will be grieved—but I must go. If the Alta’s book were to come out with those wretched, slangy letters unrevised, I should be utterly ruined” [MTL 2: 202].