Maybe Twain liked roses --red roses in particular---

The following is a quote from an autograph fragment in my possession that
was probably clipped by Merle Johnson from Twain's 1904/5 "lost notebook"
(fragments of about the same size and type of paper, clipped from some
unidentified source, can all be traced to 1904/5, all display late
holograph, all are in pencil, and all have provenances that start with Merle
Johnson --and all that I have been able to trace take the form of notebook
entries rather than letter or ms fragments).

"Sunday 17th, from 11 till----  a dim & wet & driving gray snow, through
which the red roses showed like fire-coals & the grass looking furiously &
fantastically green. Great storms Jan 4 in NY --read it yesterday in Sun."

Of course, if you write prose blending gray, red, and green you get purple.

January 17th fell on a Sunday in 1875, 1886, 1892, 1897, 1904, and 1909.
Twain was in Hartford on that date in 1875 and 1886, in Berlin in 1892,
London in 1897, Florence in 1904, and at Stormfield in 1909.  If on Jan 16th
("yesterday") he read a Jan 4th New York weather report from the New York
Sun, I'd think he was overseas at the time, leaving 1892, 1897 and 1904 as
the probable dates, and given the dates of the "lost notebook" cut to pieces
by Merle Johnson (and the provenance and characteristics of this fragment),
my guess is he wrote this in Florence. The Villa di Quarto was surrounded by
a large private park with flowering shrubs.

Kevin Mac Donnell
Austin TX