Vol 3 Section 0832

⁷⁷⁰                                                                        1902

And all the evening there was the same joy, the same excitement & hilarity, taken right out of 33 years ago & reproduced unchanged under the same ceilings—lord God, what a sad thing a wedding is!

Sam then related the birthday banquet and the flattering goings on, but was quite mistaken when he said it was a “private dinner” with no mention of it to be in the papers [LLMT 339-40].

Sam inscribed a card at the bottom of the “extra” copper dinner plate from his Nov. 28 birthday celebration to his niece, Miss Ida Langdon:

love of / your Uncle Sam” [Gannett-Tripp Learning Center, Elmira College]. Note: “Ida the Lesser,” (1880-1964) daughter of Charles J. Langdon and Ida Clark Langdon.

Arthur Aronsohn wrote to Sam offering an “obituary” for his Harper’s Weekly contest [MTP].

G.F. Rinehardt wrote to Sam offering an “obituary” for his Harper’s Weekly contest, his entry in a clipping of the Newton Daily Herald, Iowa:

Here lies, as he has never lied,

In narrow bed and dark;

His soul and body side by side,

The Twain an easy Mark [MTP].

The Critic ran “The Sixty-Seventh Birthday of Mark Twain.” Source: The Twainian (Jan. 1940) [Tenney 36].

December – The North American Review included the first installment of Mark Twain’s “Christian Science” (p.756-68) series written in 1897-8 in Vienna. The installments ran monthly through the Apr. 1903 issue. A book would result from these articles, though Harpers would delay it till 1907.

Harper’s Monthly Magazine ran Mark Twain’s story, “Was it Heaven? or Hell?” It was collected in The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906) [Budd, Collected 2: 1008]. Note: He received a lot of responses on this.

Sam also wrote to the Missouri Historical Society, thanking them for the compliment of making him an honorary member [MTP].

Sam inscribed his copy of William Schwenck’s (1836-1911) 1902 operetta, Patience; or, Bunthorne’s Bride: “S.L. Clemens / Dec. 1902” [Gribben 259]. Note: Gribben adds that the “Clemens’ household had been familiar with this operetta (produced in 1881) for two decades.

Connecticut Magazine ran “Mr. Howell’s [sic] Literary Appreciation of Mark Twain,” p.409-12 by William Dean Howells, essentially a condensation of his “Mark Twain: An Inquiry” from 1901, with only minimal editorial comment added [Tenney 37].

Maria R. Hemiup wrote to Sam offering an “obituary” for his Harper’s Weekly contest [MTP].

December 1 Monday – Sam, daughter Jean, and Katy Leary were in Elmira, N.Y. [NB Dec. 3; 45, TS 34].

an unidentified person wrote from St. Louis to Sam offering an “obituary” for his Harper’s Weekly contest [MTP].

December 2 Tuesday – Sam, daughter Jean, and Katy Leary were in Elmira, N.Y. [NB Dec. 3; 45, TS 34].

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