June 28 Sunday – Sam replied from Elmira to the June 23 of Anna E. Dickinson, who was going abroad and had asked for letters of introduction to his friends. Sam sent introductory letters off to Frank Finlay, editor Northern Whig, Belfast; Dr. John Brown, Edinburgh, Rev. George MacDonald, London; and Sir Thomas & Lady Hardy, London. Sam noted: “(No lummoxes among these.)” Sam listed a few others that Anna should try to meet [MTL 6: 169].

Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote to Sam.

My dear Clemens: / In gathering up my traps to night—we move from this place for good to-morrow—I came across a half-finished letter to you, begun weeks ago. Something, I don’t know what, interrupted me, and I was n’t able to get back to you again.

I have been laid up these eight or ten days with a fever, and have given myself a great deal of trouble wonderin how things were going with you. I actually lay awake the better part of two nights going over all the details of our visit at your house, and dreading to hear some sad news from you. See what a fever will do to the most level brain!

To day Howells dined with us, and told us about the boy. Somehow it lifted a weight from my mind. Your wife seemed so delicate, and that sickness is so hard to bear. I congratu[l]ate you and her with all my heart. My wife would add her say, only she has gone to bed with a sick-headache, the duties of moving having tired her out.—

Did the book reach you all right? I did n’t send you the revise of the Montana chapter, for I had n’t the face to impose any more on your kindness. I need not tell you how deeply I appreciate the trouble you took in the matter. Sometime when you are caught in a net, I’ll come and gnaw at the meshes and let you [out,] as the mouse did the lion in the fable. With the warmest thoughts of you & yours, / Your Friend / T. B. Aldrich [MTPO]. Note: Sam replied on July 8.

In Elmira on June 29, Livy wrote to Sam after he left for a quick trip to Hartford to inspect the progress on their new house. Livy’s letter seems to pinpoint the day before, June 28, as the date that Aunty Cord told her tale of woe which was to become “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It,” (Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1874). What follows is after Livy’s signature, and the segment that puts Cord’s telling of her story to Sunday, June 28, 1874:

Evening— / Allie and Theodore have come and had their tea and now we are sitting much as we did last night I am sitting inside the window, Sue & Allie outside but darling I do miss you as night comes Allie sits just where you did when Aunty Cord was telling us of her son but I didn’t hold her hand as I did yours, oh how I love you, & long for your return when you are absent. / Livy [MTPO].