December 23 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells.

My sense of disgrace does not abate. It grows. I see that it is going to add itself to my list of permanencies—a list of humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years old, & which keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentancies.

It seems as if I must have been insane when I wrote that speech & saw no harm in it, no disrespect toward those men whom I reverenced so much. And what shame I brought upon you, after what you said in introducing me! It burns me like fire to think of it [MTLE 2: 209].

Sam, from a sense of deep shame and humiliation, but also from the knowledge that his speech had embarrassed Howells, asked that his recent short story, “The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton,” scheduled to run in the Atlantic, be pulled. Sam felt he’d been “injured…all over the country,” and wished to “retire from before the public at present. It will hurt the Atlantic for me to appear in its pages, now” [MTLE 2: 209].

Xantippe (“Tip”) Saunders wrote to Sam: “…as the holidays approach it reminds me of the pleasant week I spent at your house one year ago” [MTPO Notes with Dec. 20, 1876 to Perkins].

Dr. Asa Millet (1813-1893; father of Francis Davis Millett) wrote to Sam: “Dear Sir / Thinking that perhaps a look at the boy in his army rig might not be [illegible word] to you & Mrs Clemens I enclose a copy of a photo sent me by Frank in five days ago” [MTP].