March 30 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood thanking him for books sent and requesting another. About Jesse Leathers’ manuscript:

Howells don’t seem to have no taste. The Earl’s literary excrement charmed me like Fanny Hill. I just wallowed in it. I do not think you ought to publish it yourself, but I do think you ought to use your influence with Aldrich. —But you never will. You are as dainty and effeminate as Howells; so I know perfectly well that you will simply urinate on the Earl’s MS and send it back to him without other comment. It is what Howells used to do with poems of sentiment when I sent him any. Truly Yrs S L Clemens [MTLTP 136].