May 7 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Howells, who had written two letters, one praising the Gilded Age play. Howells said he had “done some shouting” over Raymond’s portrayal of Col. Sellers at the May 1 performance at Boston’s Globe Theater. Sam wasn’t going to push the issue but felt that Raymond wasn’t able to portray the “finer points in Sellers’s character.” Sam also wrote that to criticize Raymond openly would make him look “ungracious,” since the play was a big hit [MTL 6: 473]. From Twichell’s journal about William H. Gillette (1853-1937), we see that acting had been a questionable, even sinful activity:

“He had the strongest predilection to the stage and yielded to what he felt was his ‘call’ … He seems a right true and manly Christian youth and I pray God he may prove that the pursuits of an actor may not be inconsistent with the Christian profession” [Yale 96-7].