January 18 Tuesday — William Dean Howells wrote from NYC to Sam.
Dear Clemens: / While your wonderful words are warm in my mind yet, I want to tell you what you know already; that you never wrote anything greater, finer, than that turning-point paper of yours.
I shall feel it honor enough if they put on my tombstone, "He was born in the same Century and general Section of middle western Country with Dr. S. L. Clemens, Oxon., and had his Degree three years before him through a mistake of the University.”
I hope you are worse. You will never be riper for a purely intellectual life again.* Yours ever
W.D. Howells.
* and it is a pity to have you dragging along with a wornout material body on top of your soul [MTHL 2: 851]. Notes. On Jan. 21 Clemens sent this letter to Paine. He wrote on it, “I reckon this spontaneous outburst by the first critic of the day is good to keep, ain’t it Paine?” He asked if Paine would send Howells’ letter to Clara. Harper's Bazar published a series by various persons, “The Turning-Point in My Life. The source notes that Sam’s contribution “is notable as the first widely-circulated exposition of Mark Twain’s determinist philosophy, and as an emphatic assertion of the view that the most important thing in his life was ‘its literary feature” [n.1].
Edward B. Hooker, M.D. wrote from Hartford to offer condolences [MTP].