January 3 Saturday – Sam wrote again from London to Livy, this time at 2 AM, but noted it was only 9 PM in Hartford.

I am imagining you in the parlor, & the Modoc gone to bed. You are sitting by the table & the Warners are about to go home in the snow—& then you will go to bed too. Well, I wish I were there with you. Here, Stoddard & I have been talking & keeping a lonely vigil for hours—but I won’t talk of it any more. It is so unsatisfying. I want you—& nobody else. I do love you so [MTL 6: 4].

On this date, give or take a day, Sam also wrote Charles Dudley Warner that he couldn’t get a lecture hall in Ireland on satisfactory dates, so he wouldn’t lecture in Ireland at all. He enclosed a clipping announcing this, which included the preface he’d written on Dec. 11 for the English version of The Gilded Age [MTL 6: 5].