March 28 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote to David Gray, his old friend and editor from Buffalo Courier, sorry that the Grays had been forced to sell their home due to financial difficulties. He related the visit of the Howellses and asked David to come visit in the spring. Sam had to move his writing desk into a bedroom to escape the nursery noise next to his study, and said that he’d started a novel (unidentified) the day before but would complete his “other books” first (Sketches, New and Old; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) [MTL 6: 429-30].

Sam also wrote to Dean Sage (1841-1902), a Brooklyn writer, sportsman, and contributor to the Atlantic and the Nation, among other magazines, as well as a Yale classmate of Twichell’s. Sam and Twichell had planned to visit Sage and wife in mid-April.

“The cheerful jug, the contemplative cigar, holy conversation, & isolation from the world—these are the things that are precious to us; & all things else hold we to be valueless” [MTL 6: 431].