January 24 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Mary Mason Fairbanks, who he wished to visit and judge the finished manuscript of P&P—(or was it another?)

 P.S. (to the letter which is in my head & which I have not time to get out.) You come here & see us, when you arrive east, & we will talk. I hate writing——however, that has become a platitude in my mouth [MTP]. Note: Everett Emerson claims this letter as Jan. 24 1884—which, when compared to Sam’s subsequent letter to Mary of Jan. 30, 1884, seems to be correct, and would refer to Sam’s never published Sandwich Islands book about Bill Ragsdale, who Frear calls “half-Hawaiian, and now almost legendary…longtime interpreter in the legislature.” Sam wrote the story some 18 years after Hawaii but did not publish it, hoping Wm. Dean Howells would block it into a play [26-27 & n.12].

Sam also wrote on an autograph form (with the heading THE AUTOGRAPHIC ILLINOIS STATE TESTMONIAL TO MRS. PRESIDENT HAYES) to Lucy Webb Hayes (1831-1889), the first lady to be called the “first lady.”

“Total Abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extreme. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from Total Abstinence itself” [MTP].

Phineas T. Barnum wrote from Bridgeport, enclosing N.Y. Sun clipping of Jan. 23, “Letters that Barnum Gets”. Barnum was recuperating from some injury and would need “another month at least to get about.” He sent the article showing all the various strange letters he rec’d, called “queer letters” by Clemens [MTP].

E.L. Hall wrote from Phila. to Clemens with a tale of reading Sam’s story about the dog chasing the coyote, then having a similar experience chasing a train & falling. Was Clemens the cause? [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Nonsense”

January 24, 26, 31 – On Jan. 31 Sam paid a Jan. 26 bill for $5 from the Daniel Appleton & Co. of New York for the North American Review subscription [Gribben 509], and $4.50 for Popular Science Monthly subscription [554]. He’d paid “Club rates” of $5 cash on these two items [MTP].