April 12 Thursday – In London, England Sam wrote to George B. Harvey, sending a table of contents for the proposed London and Tauchnitz editions of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories. Sam wrote he’d “knocked out 42,000 words & left 130,000—an over-abundance still,” and gave Harvey, the new President of Harper & Brothers, permission to “knock out anything you want; & leave in anything you please” [MTP]. Note: the letter written on old Chatto & Windus letterhead.

Sam’s notebook: “‘Daughters of the Crown.’ / The 400. Ward McAlister [sic]” [NB 43 TS 8]. Gribben refers this to Samuel Ward MacAllister (1827-1895) and his book, Society As I Have Found It (1890), where Sam wrote on the front flyleaf: “There is here nothing but the vulgarity of good society—just that and not another specialty. Unchastly, the bar sinister, greed, swinishness, insolence, arrogance, and many other absolute essentials of a real Aristocracy are wanting” [434]. Sam’s reference to the “Daughters of the Crown” was likely to a group whose membership required applicants to be American descendants of Chas. II. See speech to Lotos Club, Nov. 10, 1900