March 27 Saturday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to John Albert Macy, who had sent Sam Granville George Greenwood’s book, The Shakespeare Problem Restated (1908) and Some Acrostic Signatures of Francis Bacon, etc. (1909) by William Stone Booth.
Dear Mr. Macy: / Alas!
I can’t (by sticking strictly to the directions given) succeed in digging out any of the acrostics submerged in the Shakespeare text.
Page 581. By beginning with the initial “A” and afterward using terminals only. I can get Antonio in the prescribed twenty (20) lines, but not Bacons.
I am not instructed to go back and find a “B” and start over again.
Next, I am to begin at the bottom with an initial “F” then travel to the right and upward, confining myself to terminals; I promptly run ashore. If I can’t be allowed to also use initials, I can’t arrive. (And there is no terminal “R’’)
However, what I mainly want to speak of, is this: The reader’s job should be made easy, not difficult. Each letter of an acrostic should be printed in the margin opposite the line it belongs in, so that the reader will have no head wearying hunting to do. He won’t do that hunting, anyway, for he is human, and the human being is an ass. He will puzzle over ten (10) acrostics, suffer defeat, and deliver his verdict to any that will listen: “The acrostics are not there”—and he will not examine another one.
It is too bad, too bad, too bad!
With the acrostic letters indicated for him, the unconverted could be converted, but not by any other process.
How soon do you want the proofs back?
With love to you all, / ... [MTP]. Note: see Gribben 77 and 276.
Sam’s new guestbook:
| Name | Address | Date | Remarks |
| Julia Langdon Loomis | Elmira, N.Y. | March 27 | |
| E.E.Loomis | New York | " 27 |
Kathryn A. Burgess for the Int’! Sunshine Society, Brooklyn, wrote to invite Sam to the May 20 function at the Hotel Astor [MTP].
Julius A. Seloyd wrote from Dixon, Ill. to Sam, mentioning he’d asked permission to send his book about a year before that he “had under way, in order to show him an apparent case of rank plagiarism in said book. Such it is not—only another case of great minds running in the same channel.” He’d been called “Dixon’s Mark Twain” and was anxious to send his book. He felt Clemens might never see the letter so addressed it to “My Dear Secretary” [MTP].