Vol 3 Section 0502
pretenses. Not long ago you made a great show in prosecuting a poor Cabby for doing on a small scale, what you are doing on a large scale. …[MTP]. Note: Sam forwarded this letter to his attorney, Augustus T. Gurlitz, having rec’d it on Jan. 1, 1901. See entry for Sam’s reply.
December 29 Saturday – At the “Country Club” (Quarry Farm) in Elmira., Sam wrote to James B. Pond. “We are on the way to New York. Any morning that you would like to talk, I am on deck at home at 10.30, but writing wastes time, for manifestly it accomplishes nothing. / Yours…” [MTP].
Irving S. Underhill wrote from Buffalo, N.Y. to Sam.
You recall the Niagara Book and my unfortunate experience with it. I bear in mind most emphatically your own dismal luck in ever having anything to do with it. Nevertheless, regardless of all the anguish it has caused, it has ‘bobbed up serenely’ again and is to be published in fine shape by Doubleday, Page & Co. In the letter of transmittal forwarded with your copy seven years ago, you stated that you kept the right to print the article in some collection…at the expiration of two years after the publication of my book. … Do you intend to print it in the near future…? [MTP]. Note: Underhill, in spite of holding a letter from Sam that he no longer owed the lacking $500 for the piece, still intended to pay it
December 30 Sunday – The New York Herald ran a facsimile of Twain’s handwritten salutation from Mark Twain that had been sent originally to the Red Cross Society, and returned at Sam’s request. The facsimile published was dated Dec. 31, 1900; the copy to the Red Cross Society was originally dated Nov. 29, 1900, for use in a series of watch-meetings on New Year’s Eve, organized by the group’s manager, Frank D. Higbie, nephew of Calvin H. Higbie, Sam’s old mining partner.
The message was in the form of a toast intended to be read along with other messages by famous people. When Sam discovered sometime after Nov. 29 that the Red Cross Society was using his name in its advance announcements without authorization, he asked them to either publish the other names or return the piece, which was blatantly anti-imperialist and a minority position. The piece was returned and he then submitted it to the New England Anti-Imperialist Society and the Herald, which ran the facsimile on p.7, headlined : “New Century Greeting Which Twain Recalled” [Zwick, “Who Wrote the Couplet? etc.” MTJ 27.1 (Spring 1889): 34].
A salutation-speech from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth, taken down in short-hand by Mark Twain:
I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonored from pirate-raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, & the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap & a towel, but hide the looking-glass. / Mark Twain / New York, Dec. 31 1900. [Note: The New England Anti-Imperialist League printed the salutation on small cards and distributed it nationally; see Feb. 8, 1901 entry].
At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam wrote “I’m home again” on a card to Augustus T. Gurlitz [MTP: MS
Sotheby Parke-Bernet, N.Y. catalog Dec. 11, 1990, Item 382,].
Sam also wrote to Pamela Moffett, enclosing D.B. Montgomery’s Dec. 26 letter seeking genealogical information. “Many thanks for your Xmas greeting [not extant]—& wishing you health & prosperity. If you like, you can answer this inquirer. I’m not able, as I am ignorant of the subject & not interested” [MTP].
Isabel Lyon wrote for Sam to the Australian Society of New York. “Mr. S. L. Clemens desires to thank the Australian Society of New York cordially for the valued compliment of their invitation, and at the same time express his regret that he is so circumstanced as to be unable to accept it” [MTP: The Advertiser (Adelaide, South Australia, 21 Feb. 1901, p. 5]. Note: the group made a second attempt, to which Sam replied on Jan. 2, 1901; see entry.
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.