Vol 3 Section 0968

not found, evidently. Livy hoped that Harriet might come down before they leave sometime before Oct.

         She dreaded leaving her friends in America but hoped “great things from the trip.” After her signature she added, “Have you by any chance a newspaper cutting of the letter Mr. Clemens wrote about Annie’s book” [MTP]. Note: Annie Trumbull, a close family friend.

Sam’s notebook: “In the quaint wording of the Chronicle ‘in their shirt-tails.’ / Clay & Dr. Starr. / Dr. Helmer / Dr. Underwood. / Get literature from bank / Get silver & trunk from bank” [NB 46 TS 26]. Note: Underwood & last items use ditto marks for “Dr.” and “Get…from bank” respectively.

October 15 Thursday – Henry C. Griffin replied to Sam’s Oct. 13 about a refund of overpayment of taxes on the Tarrytown property.

Yours of the 13th instant received. [Not extant.]

The school tax will soon be ready for collection and I will send the school tax bill to Hoyt & Co., as you directed.

I have an application for return of the overpayment last Spring on the Town tax..

The Board of Supervisors will act on this application in November. Will claim $75.81. I suppose when I get the draft for this made payable to you, that Hoyt & Co. will be authorized to endorse it, so as to get the money out of which I can be paid for my services in getting it; the balance of the money to your credit [MTP]. Note: Clemens sent this note to Katharine Harrison ca. Oct. 17.

October 16 Friday – The New York Times included a copy of Sam’s letter to the Women’s Municipal League on the upcoming mayoral election within a larger political article on p.1:

MARK TWAIN FOR LOW.

———

Sends His Opinion of a Vote for Tammany to Women’s Municipal League.

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) has written a letter to the Woman’s Municipal League on the subject of the impending election, in which he says:

“I should think that any humane and honest person would rather be convicted of one robbery and one murder than become a cold and deliberate confederate in wholesale robbery and wholesale murder by voting a Tammany ticket.

“Certainly, if anything is proven up to the hilt, Tammany’s financial history and health statistics of 1901 prove that Tammany’s especial and remorseless trade is wholesale pillage and wholesale destruction of health and life” [Note: Seth Low, current mayor of NYC].

October 17 Saturday – At the Grosvenor Hotel in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Muriel M. Pears.

It isn’t that I have forgotten, but that I have been carrying so many fatiguing & annoying (business) perplexities these 4 months that I was not fitted to think, speak or write about anything else. I am not sure that the load is at last unstrapped & will tumble off three days hence or four, but I am confident of it. If I wasn’t, I couldn’t be trying to write a letter.

A month ago a Philadelphia periodical sent a photographer to the farm, & he & I had a pleasant hour or two & he took a lot of pictures, & when the proofs came the family were delighted with them (generally they ain’t.) So I selected a specimen & ordered a copy of it to be sent to you—to remind you that I wasn’t forgetting. But I find, now, that it takes so much time & red tape to effectively copyright such things, that my reminder failed of its office & probably hasn’t started until about now; I judge so because the number which we ordered from the various negatives reached us only yesterday.

I think there is an old darkey in the one you will receive. He has been in the family’s service 40 years— originally as coachman. About 27 years ago, by an exertion of very extraordinary strength, courage & quick judgment he saved from death my wife’s young sister-in-law & her little girl—the little girl has been a wife a

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