March 16 Tuesday – In Hartford, Sam wrote a long inscription to Twichell in a copy of A Tramp Abroad, marking various pages where things happened, pointing out how imagination had “preposterously expanded” some things.

“We had a mighty good time, Joe, & the 6 weeks I would dearly like to repeat, any time—but the rest of the 14 months, never. With love, Yours, Mark” [MTLE 5: 45].

David Watt Bowser (b.1868?) wrote to Sam, enclosing a composition he’d written for school on Mark Twain. He added a PS bombshell for Twain: “I forgot to tell you that our principal used to know you when you were a little boy and she was a little girl, but I expect you have forgotten her, it was so long ago” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “A Boy’s Composition. / Answered / Mch 20, 1880”; Bowser’s teacher was none other than Sam’s old sweetheart, Laura Hawkins Dake.