August 10 Thursday – Helen M. Chapin (Mrs. Thomas E. Chapin) wrote from Newton Centre, Mass. “Please do me the favor to accept the contents of a box which I send by the same mail, with the hope that they will amuse you. They are four ‘Illuminated Silhouettes’ …If you will hold them between your eye and the light you will be able to see through them, and perhaps read a moral lesson!” [MTP]. Note: sent to Hartford, not Elmira.

Moncure Conway wrote from Ostend, Belgium.

My dear Mark, / Your letter [Elmira July 24] has followed me over here, & alas, finds me in a condition of profound ignorance as to the gains which Toole and Sothern make per week. And this is not the worst of it: the only persons in London to whom I could write about it are absent. So unless I can cudgel my brains into performing a miracle I fear you will not get your telegram. However, as you will know that before this reaches you I say no more about it.

      I have written immediately to H. J. Byron, & if he is at home shall hear from him immediately. I shall do my best.

      I have given William Black the novelist a letter of introduction to you. You will get any amount of information from him. He is a charming fellow.

      That letter of mine in the Cincinnati Commercial about Tom Sawyer was not so shrewd as it seems. It was written under the full impression that the book would be in many American hands before it could appear in the West. But the other day I found a part of my letter with an extract from Tom in a Paris newspaper! But what is to keep it out of the American press? I confess to having felt somewhat guilty when your revelations & marvels came, but it never occurred to me that my letter was responsible for all the floating extracts. Nor do I quite believe it yet, for I think I saw an extract in a Western paper which I never sent over. However, as the benevolent robber said, ‘I hope Monsieur feels grateful to me for not taking his life.’ And another robber said “Sir, allow me to relieve you of this your purse, for this forest is infested with highwaymen, and it will be impossible for you to retain it.” / Ever yours / M D Conway / I shall be at home by Aug. 26 [MTPO].