Vol 3 Section 0631

October 20 Sunday – In N.Y.C. Sam wrote on “Order of Acorns” letterhead to Joseph Johnson, Jr.

“Dear Mr. Johnson: / I forgot to say don’t do anything with the article without first giving me a chance to read the proof”

[MTP].

Note: Joseph Johnson, Jr. was the president (“Great Oak”) of the Order of Acorns, sort of a political action group that supported Seth Low (1850-1916) for N.Y.C. mayor. Sam would accompany Johnson and speak on Oct. 29 with Low. See entry. Low was a leading reformer in the Progressive movement; Mayor of Brooklyn (1881-1885), President of Columbia University (1890-1901), Mayor of New York (1902-1903).

Budd writes of Sam’s involvement with the anti-Tammany Hall forces, including the Order of Acorns which supported Seth Low for Mayor and other Fusion ticket candidates:

After a Fusion ticket got rolling, Twain loudly joined the Order of Acorns, which had a journalistic cadre to marshall the ways and means of publicity. In early October 1901 he granted at least two bull’s-eye interviews and doubtlessly welcomed two cartoons that pitted him against the Tammany tiger. [see insert] Going beyond

his pledged help he delivered a carefully wrought oration that was  hurried out as a supplement to Harper’s Weekly and reprinted as an Acorn pamphlet. Then, as the voting came closer, he twice perked up a noonday rally with rough-and-tumble metaphors. At Fusion headquarters, for reporters from the Tribune and Sun, he pretended eagerness to trudge around pasting up

its posters. He exultantly presided at a victory rally [Nov. 6], led its parade of three thousand in a carriage, and then reviewed it at Times Square.…This campaign marked his most lively and visible splashing in the mire of “politics” [Our MT, 187].

Sam’s notebook: “Yale University 200th anniversary” [NB 44 TS 15].

Clemens may have spent the night in New York City, but the next day he was in New Haven for the Yale Bicentennial, from Oct. 20 to 24. His NB entry of Oct. 21gives a 4 p.m. train time. The ceremonies began in the morning of Oct. 20, with Joseph Twichell speaking in the college chapel, and special services with sermons in the churches on the Green. Sam likely missed most or all of these. In the afternoon Dean George P. Fisher “reviewed the history of Yale’s relation to Theology and Missions”

[The Independent (NY), Oct. 31, 1901 p. 2553; NY Times, Jun 16, 1901 p.20].

October 21 Monday – Sam’s notebook: “Professor Farnam. / Yale Leave 4.pm. Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes’s Mother. [inserted above:] Sec’y of Yale / 88 Trumbull St.” [NB 44 TS 15]. Note: Henry W. Farnam (1853-1933), professor of economics at Yale.

Sam went to New Haven, Conn. to take part in the festivities for Yale University’s Bicentennial celebration. He would stay there until Oct. 24 and receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree; he already had an honorary MA degree from Yale (1888) [Oct. 22 to Livy; MTHL 2: 730n3].

The Independent (NY) described the day and evening festivities, most of which Sam chose to miss:

Those who came Monday morning saw thousands of graduates in the streets and on the campus, while everywhere, in flags and elaborate decorations, Yale blue met the eye. That morning the new gateway—a memorial to [Ward] Cheney and [Gerard Merrick] Ives, who gave up their lives in the war with Spain—was dedicated, and in the chapel there were addresses, largely historical, by Thomas Thatcher (class of ’71), on Yale in its relation to the Law, and by Professor Welch (’70), of Johns Hopkins University, on the relation of Yale to Medicine. At these exercises were sung Dr. Leonard Bacon’s hymn, “O God, beneath Thy guiding

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