Vol 3 Section 0493
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December 9 Sunday – |
1900 439
“You can get no one to believe that you rode on a London underground road,” said he, “unless you have a cinder in your eye, and, as for the buses, some find it cheaper to ride on a London bus than to pay board. [Laughter.]
“New York is also cleaner than it used to be. It is cleaner than Bombay. But I’m not here to flatter Bombay.” [Laughter.]
When the speaker got around to what referred to as the internal characteristic of the city he lapsed into sarcasm of the most biting sort, interrupted frequently by applause.
“By the municipal government of a city,” he said, “a foreigner distinguishes it character. He sees now that you have the best municipal Government that the world has ever seen. The purest, the most fragrant. The angels in heaven must envy you. You got it by your noble fidelity to civic duty, by your stern and watchful exercise of the powers conferred upon you with your citizenship. You got it by your manly refusal to sit inert while men made high places and took them.
“You who have made this city the envy of the world and when you enter the gates of heaven the angels will say, ‘Here they come! The citizens who saw their civic duty and did it. Turn on the limelight.’”
Baron Gevers, in responding to the toast “Holland the Founder of New Amsterdam,” referred to the friendship that had always existed between America and the Netherlands. “Now, when we are next-door neighbors in the Far East,” said he, “there is reason why those ties that have always bound us should be drawn closer.” [Cheers.]
The health of Queen Wilhelmina was drunk at the conclusion of the Minister’s speech.
Other toasts were drunk and responded to as follows: “Our Country,” the Rev. J. Lewis Parker; “The Army,” Gen. Brooke; “The Navy,” Read Admiral Barker; “The Close of the Nineteenth Century,” ex-Judge Henry E. Howland.
December 7 Friday – At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam replied to Christian B. Tauchnitz.
Indeed I will do you that “great favor” with very great pleasure, and shall hold those books in high regard as a remembrancer of the pleasant relations which have subsisted unbroken between us this long stretch of years [MTP: TS Curt Otto, Verlag Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1912, p.126]. Note:Tauchnitz’ incoming not extant. See entries in Vol. I & II.
December 8 Saturday – L.J. Bridgman’s article, “To Mark Twain,” ran in Harper’s Weekly. Tenney: “Source: Listed in The Twainian, II (March, 1940), 3 as ‘poem illustrated by author’; a search of this issue was unsuccessful, and the citation appears to be incorrect” [32].
Sam’s notebook: “Meet Wn— / Lunch, 1.30 Felix Adler, 123 East 60th / Dinner, 8— Jorda[n Mott] first to meet Churchill—/ 17 E 47th” [NB 43 TS 30-1]. Note: “Wn” may be Winston. Jordan Lawrence Mott, Jr. (1829-1915) inherited the JL Mott Iron Works upon the death of his father in 1898. This name fixes also with the same address Sam listed in his NB Felix Adler (1851-1933), Jewish intellectual who founded the Society for Ethical Culture; in 1902 took the chair of political and social ethics at Columbia University. He is considered as a major influence on Humanistic Judaism.
Carl Schurz wrote on mourning note paper to Sam. “I have taken the liberty of sending you copies of two of my speeches on Imperialism, one made before the Chicago University on Jan 4 1899 while the peace treaty was still under [illegible word] and the other in the late presidential campaign.” He hoped to meet with Twain while he was in N.Y.
[MTP].
December 10 Monday – Sam’s notebook: “Bad head-cold—from exposure at Motts. Woke up with it at 3 a.m. Was treated by Helmer (osteopath) at 3 this afternoon. Cold all gone before 11 to-night. No physician could do that wonderful thing” [NB 43 TS 31]. Note: Motts also mentioned for Dec. 18 dinner; NB entry.
Ella T. Smith wrote to Sam about this day, her letter not extant but referred to in his reply of Jan. 1, 1901
[MTP].
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.