February 5 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Mary Mason Fairbanks after receiving her letter. Evidently the New York Sun’s article about Sam being “connected” with the Hartford Courant had reached as far as Cleveland, because Sam had to explain again that the “article was manufactured out of whole cloth.” The rumor stemmed from the telephone connection between the Courant and the Clemens home. Sam also had to answer Mary’s questions about the Whittier birthday dinner debacle, and by now Sam had moved away from a shamed, humble-pie perspective.

But nobody has ever convinced me that that speech was not a good one—for me; above my average, considerably. I could as easily have substituted the names of Shakespeare, Beaumont & Ben Jonson, (since the absurd situation was where the humor lay,) & all these critics would have discovered the merit of it, then. But my purpose was clean, my conscience clear, & I saw no need of it. Why anybody should think three poets insulted because three fantastic tramps choose to personate them & use their language, passes my comprehension. Nast says it is very much the best speech & the most humorous situation I have contrived [MTLE 3: 11].

Sam related his failed attempts to convince Thomas Nast to collaborate on a lecture tour. He discussed his current writing projects: “a historical tale, of 300 years ago, simply for the love of it,” (Prince and the Pauper) that the Young Girls Club, Livy and Susan Warner were “very much fascinated with”; a “novel of the present day—about half finished,” and two other books started, “but am not going to continue them until summer.” Sam also related the success of the Scrap-Book through Dan Slote.

“It seems funny that an invention which cost me five-minutes thought, in a railway car one day, should in this little while be paying me an income as large as any salary I ever received on a newspaper. My royalty on each book is very trifling—so the sales are already very great” [MTLE 3: 13]

Dan Slote for Slote, Woodman & Co. wrote to Sam, more details on the planned Sketches book [MTP].

 Orion Clemens wrote to Sam thanking for $42 sent in 3 drafts. “I have an itching palm to pitch into religion, because hell is raging in our pulpits, Keokuk having caught the epsoatic inaugurated by Beecher, but forbear, on your suggestion, and I am on bill to deliver something at the Red Ribbon Club, but I forbear again.” He noted that Bloodgood H. Cutter, of “poet lariat” fame had been in Keokuk last weekend [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Preserve” and “Orion’s Gorilla Story”