February 16 Tuesday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote with finality: “I can’t manage the trip [to New Orleans] this winter” [MTHL 1: 66].

Sam spotted an article in the New York Times in which a loophole had been claimed in a copyright case for a play. Worried about the three attempts at unauthorized production of his Gilded Age play, Sam, in Hartford, wrote to Ainsworth R. Spofford, librarian of Congress, and asked him to confirm whether the article was “correct or erroneous.” Sam enclosed the clipping [MTL 6: 387]. Note: Copyright law was still rather new, but in Boucicault v. Hart the Supreme Court ruled in June 1875 that even without statutory copyright on an unpublished play, the author still retained control of it under common law. Sam fought for the rights of writers during his entire lifetime. 

James R. Osgood replied to the Feb. 12 from Clemens.

My dear Clemens: / Your letter of 12th inst. is received to-day. Though it grieves me, it yet pleases me. I am pleased to have been the unconscious cause of benefitting a fellow-creature—such an experience being a rare one for a publisher! And I confess to some degree of delight in finding signs of weakness in so accomplished a business-man and successful gambler as yourself: I wouldn’t have believed that you could make such a contract, or having made, forget it! But age will tell.

Seriously I am more sorry than I can tell to lose the book, particularly as I came so near getting it. But to show you that I bear no malice, I hereby invite you to that Nautilus Club dinner which was postponed from Jan 20th on account of Underwood’s illness. It will come off on Wednesday February 24th. Will you come? It will be Aldrich’s last public appearance before crossing the Atlantic. Let me know as soon as you can.

I should delight in that Mississippi trip, but it would be more possible for a rich man (like you) to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for me to leave home in March or April. But Howells must go—he needs a vacation and he would get such a lot of material. / Yours truly / J. R. Osgood [MTPO].

Mrs. Clara St. John wrote from NYC to ask for a Mark Twain photo & autograph [MTP].