March 20 Saturday – This was the approximate issue date for A Tramp Abroad. Sam wrote from Hartford to Elisha Bliss. Sam liked the look of the book, but noted that both Roughing It and Gilded Age sold “nearly double as many copies, in this length of time, so I imagine the Canadians have been working us heavy harm.” He was also glad the newspapers hadn’t knocked the book. Sam confirmed receipt of a check for $977.23, noting the old books were decreasing in sales. He closed with a discussion of Bliss joining the Kaolatype investment of which he owned a four-fifths interest with Charles Perkins and Dan Slote [MTLE 5: 46].

Sam also answered a letter from a Texas schoolboy, David Watt Bowser, who signed his letter “Wattie.” The boy was fulfilling a school assignment and wrote to Sam, who may never have answered without what Powers calls “the thunderclap of a postcript”:

“O! 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.”

The teacher was Laura Wright Dake, Sam’s first love (well, one of them at least). Sam wrote a long response, answering the boy’s questions, then added:

No indeed, I have not forgotten your principal at all. She was a very little girl, with a very large spirit, a long memory, a wise head, a great appetite for books, a good mental digestion, with grave ways, & inclined to introspection—an unusual girl. How long ago it was! Another flight backward like this, & I shall begin to realize that I am cheating the cemetery [MTLE 5: 47-50]. Powers writes that Sam and Wattie exchanged ten letters over the next few months [MT A Life 440].

Orion Clemens wrote one page to Sam asking him to return his MS. “If you have not read it, please don’t.” Also, “The diagram in the Atlantic gives you a good seat at the banquet, flanked by ladies” [MTP].