January 12 Tuesday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote Sam a two-line note that the last installment of “Old Times” was “extraordinarily good” [MTHL 1: 59].

In Hartford Sam wrote to Howells about the proposed trip to New Orleans and Livy’s inability to go. He urged Howells to take his wife along anyway, and invited the Howellses to visit as soon as the furniture arrived for one of his guest rooms [MTL 6: 348]. Howells’ letters to Sam returned jibes with interest.

The Gilded Age play ran for a second successful evening in Hartford. From Joe Twichell’s journal:

Went to hear M.T’s play “The Gilded Age” in the Opera House—the first of my theatre going in Hartford. Mark got me a box, and I invited Burton and Emerson. Burton took Dick along and I, Mrs. T. and we had a pleasant time of it. The audience seeing us supposed that MT was with us in the box, and at the end of one of the acts made a great clamor calling him out, all eyes being bent on us. But M.[ark] was not there at all” [inserted in the journal, from the Hartford Evening Post, a letter from Sam read by Raymond] [Yale, copy at MTP]. Note: Nathaniel J. Burton, and Ralph Waldo Emerson