August 1 Wednesday – William Dean Howells wrote from Kittery Point, Maine to Sam.

Thank you for letting me see Clara’s just tribute to you. It is a great thing to have one’s children not rise up and knock one’s head off after reading one’s writings, but it seems that it happens in your family some times as it does in mine. Many people have written me about that lovely and loveable article of yours. Some it seems to have roused to a remembrance of my existence; some it has instructed of the fact; and you did it uot of the goodness of your heart, as well as the soundness of your head.

But I cannot allow Clara to call Venetian Life “Venetian Days.” You are the only person in the world who may do this and not be destroyed.

Howells then told of a “summer of suffering” of his wife’s health. They had been re-reading FE nightly “with a delight truly unspeakable.” He PS’d: “What about that MS of your Autobiography which I was to have?” [MTHL 2: 815-16]. Notes: Sam had written an essay titled “William Dean Howells” (published in Harper’s Monthly for July 1906) in which he referred to “Venetian Life” as “Venetian Days”; Clara’s letter used the phrase “Venetian Days.”

George B. Harvey for Harper & Brothers wrote to Sam. “We have the pleasure in granting you application for the privilege of printing two hundred and fifty copies of your proposed new book, not yet named, for private distribution” [MTP]. Note: this letter appears to be in another hand than Harvey’s, written for him. The book referred to is “What is Man?” On the back of the env. Sam wrote, “Authorization to print privately 250 copies of the “Gospel,” evidently a categorizing note.