February 25 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Mary Mason Fairbanks. Sam and Livy had been renting the Hooker house while their new home was being built. They planned on taking occupancy in the new house after returning from Elmira in the fall. Sam asked Mary to come the middle of March instead of going to Philadelphia, since their plans were to leave for Elmira “the 15th or 16th of April.” (Mrs. Fairbanks did travel east with her son, Charley, and visited the Clemens family just before they left.) Sam wrote that he was “writing two admirable books,” probably the English book which he abandoned and the other, continued work on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He was also writing a play, the version of Hamlet with a commentator, which he also gave up on. On top of these several projects, Sam was “preparing several volumes of my sketches for publication, & am writing new sketches to add to them.” After collecting these in a pamphlet, “Mark Twain’s Sketches. Number One,” was withdrawn in the spring. The better collection was issued as Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (1875) [MTL 6: 46].

About this date, Sam sent a note to an unidentified person about a play he was working on (likely the Hamlet burlesque) [MTL 6: 51].

Sam and Livy probably went to see the Vokes family perform The Belles of the Kitchen, a comedy at the Roberts Opera House in Hartford (See Feb. 23 entry) [MTL 6: 44n1]

February? 25 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Will Bowen, childhood friend and fellow steamboat pilot. Bowen was an insurance agent in St. Louis. Sam invited him to visit after the family returned from Elmira for the summer.

“If you’ll drop in on us for a week or so next fall or winter, we’ll play billiards up stairs all day & euchre down stairs all night, & have a general good time. Will you?” [MTL 6: 50]. Note: Will had recently lost his wife.