January 18 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, answering his Jan. 16 letter:

Thanks, & ever so many, for the good opinion on Tom Sawyer. Williams has made about 200 rattling pictures for it—some of them very dainty. Poor devil, what a genius he has, & how he does murder it with rum. He takes a book of mine, & without suggestion from anybody builds no end of pictures just from his reading of it.

Truman “True” Williams did the drawings for several of Sam’s books, and contributed 159 drawings for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer [Powers, MT A Life 383]. Sam pointed out a line that got past the censorship of Livy and Howells: “and they comb me all to hell.” The word was changed to “thunder” [MTLE 1: 12]

Moncure Conway arrived in Hartford to pick up a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer manuscript to carry to England for publication there [Norton, Writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 30]. Conway had also received three lecture dates in Hartford and wanted to stay with the Clemenses, at least part of the time. He wrote Sam from Boston on Jan. 5 of the lecture dates and in anticipation of billiards at the Clemens home. From the recently added 1876 annotations on MTPO:

Sponsored by Hartford’s Unitarian Society, Conway lectured at Allyn Hall on “Demonology, or the Natural History of the Devil,” “Science and Religion in England,” and “Oriental Religions; Their Origin and Progress” on 18, 22, and 23 January, respectively, staying with the Clemenses while he was in Hartford. The book Clemens wanted Conway to offer to an English publisher was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the American edition of which was in production at the American Publishing Company in Hartford. For Conway’s own gloss of “Dissenters’ trouble,” see L6, 600–1. The famous diary that Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) began keeping in shorthand in 1659 was first deciphered and published in part in 1825 (Hartford Courant: “Amusements,” 17 Jan 76, 2; “The Devil: Mr. Conway’s Lecture on Demonology,” 19 Jan 76, 1, 4; “Mr. Conway’s Lectures,” 24 Jan 76, 1; L6, 585–86; Pepys 1825).

Sam’s article “Recollections of a Storm at Sea” ran in the Cleveland Bazaar Record [Camfield, Bibliog.; The Twainian, July-Aug. 1949 p1].

Sam’s letter of Jan. 5, declining to attend the 28th anniversary of the discovery of gold in California was read aloud. The Associated Pioneers met at the Sturtevant House in New York. John A. Sutter could not attend, but Joaquin Miller was the “honored guest” [Jan. 5 to Clark MTPO].

George F. Leavis for the Dartmouth College Smoker’s Club wrote to inform Clemens of his honorary membership and enclosed a journal (not in file) “devoted to the interests of smokers” [MTP].