1 Clemens responded to the following telegram from White—a reporter for the Boston Morning Journal and secretary of the Boston Press Club—which reached Buffalo on the evening of 11 November and was preserved in Olivia Clemens’s commonplace book: “‘The press club” Sups tomorrow Eve. Come and bring the Baby” (CU-MARK). The occasion was the club’s annual dinner, at Young’s Hotel, known for “its choice table” (L3, 395 n. 4; Boston Directory 1870, 692). The Morning Journal of 14 November may have paraphrased the actual telegram received by White. The paraphrase printed the same day in both the Boston Advertiser and the Evening Transcript almost certainly derived from a reporter’s transcription of the telegram as it was read aloud:

“Rock Me to Sleep, Mother,” first published in 1860, had words by Elizabeth Anne Chase Akers Allen (pseudonym Florence Percy; 1832–1911) and music by Obadiah Bruen Brown (pseudonym Ernest Leslie; 1829–1901) (NAW, 1:36–38; NUC, 79:275–76, 328:239; NCAB, 12:256).