1 James Hammond Trumbull (1821–97), a historian, philologist, and bibliographer, served as Connecticut’s secretary of state from 1861 to 1866, and for many years as librarian of the Watkinson Library in Hartford. In addition to compiling and editing numerous works of history and biography, he was an authority on the history and languages of New England Indian tribes.

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The Hartford Monday Evening Club (which Trumbull had helped found in January 1869) gathered fortnightly to hear and discuss an original essay presented by one of its members. Clemens attended the meeting of 17 February 1873 and heard Congregational clergyman Nathaniel J. Burton read an essay entitled “Individualism.” Samuel C. Thompson recalled a comment of Clemens’s about the club: “At the meetings . . . they generally discuss some learned subject, too deep for me; but I have to take my turn, and Dr. Burton especially gets into a gale of laughter at my attempts to contribute” (Thompson, 77). Clemens delivered his first essay—“The License of the Press”—on 31 March 1873. He remained a club member until his death (Cheney, 3, 11, 13, 14, 28).

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Albert Bigelow Paine described Trumbull as “the most learned man that ever lived in Hartford. He was familiar with all literary and scientific data, and according to Clemens could swear in twenty-seven languages.” It was he who “prepared the variegated, marvelous cryptographic chapter headings” for The Gilded Age ( MTB , 1:477–78 n. 1; see French, 272–73).