January 11 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Frank Bliss on an accounting of monies owed, including his debt of a loan to Charles Dudley Warner [MTLE 1: 34]. Note: See list of those who had received books from Sam in the notes online for this letter at MTPO. It includes the fourteen books he sent sister Pamela for the WCTU reading room in Fredonia.

Sam also wrote to Howells, responding to his Jan. 4 letter and saying he hadn’t forgot about him, but had been sick “four weeks on a stretch.” He wrote that he’d sent for a “short-hand writer & dictated answers to a bushel or so of letters that had been accumulating.” Sam had been working on an Atlantic article, which he planned to read to the Monday Evening Club at his house on Jan. 24.The article was “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut,” and Sam hoped it would generate much discussion at the club. Sam asked Howells and his wife to visit Saturday Jan. 22 and stay over for the Monday Evening Club. Sam also wrote that his Sketches book had sold 20,000 copies [MTLE 1: 35].