January 4 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells that his play, A Counterfeit Presentment, was “enchanting. I laughed & cried all the way through it” [MTLE 3: 1]. The play ended in Boston. Howells wrote more than 30 works for the theater and this was his best, though only moderately successful.

Eustace Conway (son of Moncure Conway) wrote from Hamlet House Hammersmith, West London to Sam concerning Chatto offering the “Random Notes” as a book for 4d. “Mr. Chatto also writes that ‘there is some danger of an unauthorized edition of the Mississippi Pilot being brought out in this country as that book has already been reprinted in Canada against Mark twain’s wish’ ” [MTP]. Note: in 1858 Moncure Daniel Conway married Ellen Davis Dana, and had three sons and a daughter.