December 24 Monday – This is the date Sam gave as having returned Bret Harte’s I.O.U.’s totaling $3,000, only to receive an indignant reply that “permanently annulled the existing friendship.” As Duckett explains, “If Mark Twain’s date is correct, the return of the notes occurred within a week after Mark’s humiliation at the Whittier Birthday Dinner. During this period, Mark Twain felt increasingly penitent and friendless” [168].

Sam Bernard wrote to Sam; not found at MTP, but catalogued as UCLC 48597.

H. Ulrich wrote from Louisville, Ky. enclosing a small play bill of the Young Ladies Social Society, with Katie Ulrich in the lead role in Elvira Slimmons’s Millinery Shop. “I am very sorry that I could not get that Dramma called Tom Sawyer. I would like to have it so much.” She/He asked him to compose one on the same order or “one on two sharp boys” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Curiosity Dec. 27th 1877”