As to the "Christmas hope" and the inventor of the telephone, see the
letter of explanation that Clemens wrote to Alexander Graham Bell's
father-in-law Gardiner G. Hubbard, dated 27 December 1890.  Scans of
the letter are online from the Library of Congress:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bellhtml/004039.html

"A Christmas Hope" had been published a few days earlier in
the New York _World_ on 25 Dec. 1890. (See Camfield's bibliography
in the _Oxford Companion to Mark Twain_.)

Barb