November 17 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Howells, apologizing again for being late for lunch the day before, and relating that Livy: 

“…gets upon the verge of swearing & goes tearing around in an unseemly fury when I enlarge upon the delightful time we had in Boston & she not there to have her share” [MTL 6: 285].

From Twichell’s journal:

“Returned by the midnight train last night from Boston wither I had set out last Thursday morning with M.T. on our celebrated walk. We left our house in his carriage at about 8[?] O’clock, rode through the E. Hartford bridge, and there took to our feet—I carrying a little boy and he a basket of lunch” [Yale, copy at MTP].

Joe included an itinerary listed by one “ancient stage driver” A.H. Perrin, through Mr N. H. Andrews. [Yale, copy at MTP]. Andrews paraphrases Joe: Sam “told a Boston reporter that his lameness was like walking on stilts—as if he had wooden legs with pains in them” [257 n47].

On or about this day Sam wrote to his mother, Jane Clemens , that “Livy is tolerable, the rest of us well.” He included a note from Henry Watterson, a Lampton second cousin by marriage.