May 5 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Dudley Warner. Joe Goodman had sent an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about Gilbert B. Densmore, critic and editor of the Golden Era, producing an unauthorized play from The Gilded Age. Densmore left out all of Warner’s characters and sections of the work, and wrote the play as a comedy around Colonel Sellers. Sam suggested to Warner that they sign over rights to each other’s characters and that he would then buy the play from “Densmore” and either rewrite it or burn it and write a play of his own.
“I know Mr. D. mighty well & he shan’t run any play on MY brains. He is the chap who finished Bret Harte’s story for him without Bret’s asking it.”
Sam also wrote that they were packing trunks to remove to Quarry Farm today [MTL 6: 126-7].