Vol 3 Section 0558
“My scheme was to have only authors in the bill. For myself, I wanted to be the chief of force—not because I was particularly qualified, but because I was tired and wanted to rest. And I wanted Mr. Howells for First Deputy, not because he has any police ability, but because he’s tired too. And I wanted Mr. Depew to by my Second Deputy, not because he’s tired, but because he can do most anything well, and I could draw the salary. Then, he and I are members of the famous class of ‘53 at Yale, though he was there before I was.
“Then, again, Senator Depew is a Missouri man, the same as I am, and in a Missourian there is no guile. There is, too, a further bond of union in that when I was young, I was a member of a firm of twins, and one of them disappeared. There seems to me to be a resemblance in Senator Depew to me in grace of motion and fluency of speech. Which seems to me to designate him as that long-lost twin.
“Then in my Police bill I wanted Stedman, and Aldrich and Matthews for the Broadway squad, and others still for the ‘Red Light’ district, and others to look after the pretty manicurists, and to modify the activities of the cadets. Now, Depew could do that.
“Now that bill was my bright dream and my ambition. But it faded as so many other bright dreams have faded. Gov. Odell couldn’t favor it. He said he couldn’t leave the city unprotected. Now, I have nothing to do to-morrow and if the Governor will just hold a conference with me we’ll settle the police question.
“If my bill passed I’d just fill up the ‘Red Light’ district with poets—the best poets we’ve got—armed not with barbaric clubs, but with their own poems, and I would make them corral those poor unkempt people of that locality and I would have my poetic policemen read their poems to them until that region was so elevated and uplifted and reformed that the inhabitants over there themselves wouldn’t know it.”
Senator Elsberg, St. Clair McKelway, and George H. Daniels also spoke.
Sam also inscribed a menu for the above banquet in honor of the Governor to Mrs. Frank Lawrence:
“To Mrs. Lawrence with the best wishes of Mark Twain” [MTP: Phillips catalogs, May 17, 1979, Item 602]. Note: Frank Lawrence was president of the Club. This particular menu also signed by Theodore Roosevelt, Gov. Benjamin B. Odell, Jr., Josef Hofmann (the pianist), Chauncey Depew, St. Clair McKelway, R.S. MacArthur, and one other.
Jules Eckert Goodman of N.Y.C. wrote to Sam that he had the first two acts of JA as a play “entirely written and the remainder of the play in minute synopsis and scenario.” He was anxious to discuss it as soon as possible; could he have the privilege of an interview?
[MTP].
March 24 Sunday – Sam’s notebook:
“Get a box—$6. 3 p.m. Carnegie Concert” [NB 44 TS 7]. See ad insert.
At 1410 W. 10th in N.Y.C., Sam wrote to John Y. MacAlister in London. George Harvey was sailing for London and had invited Sam to cross with him. Sam’s letter introduced Harvey to
MacAlister. “Tell him how the Plasmon business is going, won’t you?” he wrote. Sam noted that H.H.
Rogers had also invited Sam to sail with him to England but he couldn’t get away [MTP].
Sam also wrote a postcard to Frances A. Ramsay, stenographer in N.Y.C. “If you could come about 2.30 or
3 tomorrow— / Very truly yours / SL. Clemens” [MTP].
An unidentified person wrote an undecipherable postcard to Sam [MTP].
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.