He misremembered somewhat. The dinner was a 5 January 1871 reunion, at the Metropolitan Hotel, for a “number of members of the Farmers’ Club of the American Institute, who made a trip to California together last Summer” (“The New-York Farmers’ Club,” New York Tribune, 6 Jan 71, 8). The secretary of the Farmers’ Club was J. W. Chambers, not Crandell; the club’s president was Nathan C. Ely, not Horace Greeley. Greeley—whose “What I Know of Farming” appeared weekly in the New York Tribune throughout 1870—was president of the parent American Institute of the City of New York, founded in 1828 to promote advances in “agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and the arts” (Lossing, 169, 171; Wilson 1870, “City Register,” 42, 43). Possibly Crandell—identified by Albert Bigelow Paine as “A. B. Crandall, in Woodberry Falls, N. Y.” (MTL, 1:180)—was its secretary. He was one of the speakers at the Farmers’ Club dinner. Clemens’s letter of regret was among several that were read.