January 24 Monday – Sam read his newly drafted story, “Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” to the Monday Evening Club at his home. This was his third presentation to the club [Monday Evening Club] Twichell remembered the story as “serious in its intent though vastly funny and splendidly, brilliantly read.” The tale was a surreal and dark treatment that questioned the origin and function of the conscience. It appeared in the June 1876 Atlantic Monthly [Wilson 101]. Kaplan suggests that the story was a way for Sam “to express concern with multiplicity and remorse, with inner conflicts as well as conflicts with the community” [194]. Note: readers can work up a sweat viewing this story anticipating Freudian terms of ego, superego, id, sin, guilt and liberation. (See entry for Mar. 13; also notes for this letter online at MTPO for a list of the current members of the Monday Evening Club.)

Sam also repeated his invitation for Howells to come for a short visit. This note does not survive [marktwainproject.com, notes for Jan. 18 to Howells].

Moncure Conway ended his stay in Hartford. He would sail to England on Mar. 11 taking the Tom Sawyer MS in search of an English publisher.

Moncure Conway wrote a postcard from NY to ask Sam to forward any letters for him to C.S. Annuel, Columbus, Ohio [MTP].

Jesse Madison Leathers wrote from Louisville, Ky., “unable to raise the means to go to England…It may be that I shall have to abandon this Earldom” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “From the Earl of Durham”