June 1 Thursday – Mary Mason Fairbanks wrote from Cleveland, Ohio to Sam.

My Dear Samuel / Can’t you and Livy come over to our house this fine morning, and bring the children? It is very funny to me, how much you have all been in my mind of late—how I have wanted your companionship—have really longed for you, and yet some mysterious grip (slow fires I think) has held my hand from writing. I believe I brought home with me your disorder, for through these many weeks I have had not mind or force enough to indite a letter. I tried to take up my pen after reading the June Atlantic, to tell you how you pleased me. Do you realize how you have improved? How time and study and conscience have developed the fineness of your nature? I just sit back in my complacence complacence & mentally pat you on the head——not that your well-doing is for me or my approval but because I knew it would be as it is, and I am pleased with my own sagacity. Your late article has some most delicate, metaphysical touches and I never was so sure of your having a live conscience, as since you have proclaimed its death.

….

      I see by the papers that Mark Twain will be at the Centennial the 15th. Do you come from thence to Elmira and when will you come to Cleveland? Mollie is away for a week. If she were here she would join me in urging your early coming. If there is one thing more than another that stirs her it is the mention of a Clemens. I think she loves you to-day with the same intensity that she did in the years gone by when you held her and her kitten in your arms. The honest worship of child or woman is precious.

      Now send me a letter real soon. Don’t break things to do it, nor banish Livy to her bed-room. What are the latest bon-mots of Susie & Clara? I have loving thoughts of you all— / Mother Fairbanks [MTPO].

June 1? Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford, sending Bliss a proposed INTRODUCTORY to Dan De Quille’s The Big Bonanza. It ran as proposed [MTLE 1: 63].