December 27 Saturday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam began a letter to William Dean Howells that he finished Dec. 28.
Suppose you send Dick Burton’s letter to Stoddard, & say, “Your proposal to expose Harriott to the publishers seems as good idea to Clemens & me. If the case were ours, we would send him a copy of Burton’s letter & say we were going to lay it before the several publishers & ask their advice as to how best to proceed in order to get the rest of the money due; & if Harriot did not reply with the money or a satisfactory promise, we should then go ahead & do that.”
It is the only promising next-move I can think of, & S. can make it perfectly well without us. I think it will win.
Jean is in a flaming fever to-night, poor thing [MTHL 2: 760-1].
In N.Y.C. William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.
I enclose a letter for H., [Frederick C. Harriott] which please have copied and send him, if you approve it. If he does not disgorge, I would ask Burton, if I were you, to write him, and remind him of the whole transaction, and then remark that he (B.) [Richard Burton] would be glad to hear from us that he (H.) had made full restitution to S. [Charles W. Stoddard] H. seems now disposed to make a stand, and as what we want is merely to get the money for S.and leave H. to his bad dreams, we had better not use the whip till we have tried chucking a little more. So I think [MTHL 2: 759]. Note: to see the enclosed letter from Howells to Fred Harriott, see source n1.
Harper’s Weekly, p.2022, ran “Mark Twain on Christian Science.” Tenney: “An editorial on MT’s article in the December North American Review; chiefly descriptive, but suggests that MT exaggerates the likelihood of Christian Science becoming a new religion: it is merely another sect” [36].