Vol 3 Section 0364

³¹⁴                                                                        1899

December 8 Friday – Henry Ferguson replied from Hartford to Sam’s Nov. 20 offer, giving particulars on names he wished edited in his and his brother’s journals, written during the Hornet saga. He was:

“…very much obliged … for your consent to my request about certain names that appear in the extract from my journal cited in your article…yet I am glad that thanks to your article, the public has known of the great wisdom, endurance, and heroism of Captain Mitchell, one of the noblest men I have ever known” [MTP]. Note: Sam replied again on Dec. 21.

December 9 Saturday

December 10 Sunday – “My First Lie and How I Got Out of It,” ran in the Sunday supplement of the N.Y. World. It was collected in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays

and My Debut as a Literary Person, with Other Essays and Stories (1903) [Budd, Collected 2: 1005;

AMT-1: 707]. Note: Sam first drafted the piece on Oct. 28.

December 11 Monday – In London, England Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

I didn’t really want to write for the World, but I was loafing for a few days, & they furnished me with a text & asked for only 2,000 words & offered $500, & I thought I might as well put in an afternoon on it.

But in my case if I had sent it to Harpers they wouldn’t have wanted it enough to pay the half of that….

The cablegrams say the Harpers are straightening up & going on with their business. I wish them success—though they advertise everybody’s books but mine. I don’t see why they should select me for a victim in preference to the others. So far as I know, I have done nothing to earn or justify this treatment. They urge all books upon Christmas buyers but mine.

I am wishing you all the happiness & prosperity due at Christmas to the best man I know except one. Modesty does not allow me to name that one, & I suppose you couldn’t guess in a year [MTHHR 418-9]. Note: Harper & Bros. was being reorganized; Col. George B Harvey became president of the company and stayed in his post the rest of Sam’s life. See Nov. 17 entry.

Henry Harland’s article, “Mark Twain” ran in the London Daily Chronicle. Tenney: “(Source: Reprinted in

Anderson (1971), pp. 227-31.) Primarily on IA, which typifies MT’s work: ‘The qualities and defects of The Innocents Abroad are the qualities and defects of Twain’s temperament, and they are present in varying proportions in all his books: vulgarity, naturalness, irreverence, freshness of vision, honesty, good-humor, wholesomeness.’ RI, TS, and HF are better books” [30].

December 12 Tuesday – In London Sam inscribed a photograph of himself for Mrs. Hinck: “We all have music & truth in us, but the most of us can’t get it out. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / To Mrs. Hinck, with kindest regards of her friend. / S.L. Clemens / Dec. 12, 1899” [MTP: Joseph M. Maddalena catalogs, No. 12 Item 92].

Sam applied to Henrick Kellgren for a bad case of lumbago, and he claimed a cure with one treatment

[Dec. 22 to Crane].

December 13 Wednesday

December 14 Thursday

December 15 Friday

December 16 Saturday – The Saturday Evening Post anonymously published an article “Mark Twain as a Cub Pilot” [Tenney 29].

Elizabeth Davis Fielder’s article, “Familiar Haunts of Mark Twain,” ran in Harper’s Weekly p. 10-11.

Tenney: “A description of Hannibal, Missiouri, with several photographs, including ‘Laura Hawkins as a girl’ and the ‘Hannibal of Fifty Years Ago.’” [30].

SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.