December 19 Monday – In Cambridge, Mass., where he was staying to be near his doctor, William Dean Howells was recovering from a five-week illness. He wrote to Sam:

I write this from my bed, where I have now been five weeks. Most of the time I have been recovering; so you see how bad I must have been, to begin with. But now I am out of any first-class pain; I have a good appetite, and I am as abusive and peremptory as Guiteau [Garfield’s assassin]. Notice the address: I came down here to be near the doctor [MTHL 1: 382].

Sam attended a meeting of the Monday Evening Club where William J. Hamersley read a paper entitled “The Relative Power of Thought and Action.” Sam wrote in his notebook he should:

Get up a profound metaphysical essay something like Hamersley’s…—only let it be all sounding pretense, meaning nothing—but do level best to fool the Club with it, & get them to conscientiously go floundering through it, honestly trying to refute it [MTNJ 2: 416, and n190].

Charles Webster wrote that “the type setter looks a little brighter, the gentlemen that I wrote you are going with me Tuesday evening and will return Wednesday at 2 P.M. Payton, Hicks, McCook & myself will remain until Wednesday evening to talk over the defect in the machine….I don’t think Slote is using proper diligence in putting out your scrap books” [MTP].

Joel Chandler Harris wrote a short note from Atlanta: “Thanks for the book—for the hint to Mr. Osgood—and for everything else.” He hoped to come up north in the spring. “I propose to write out our two ghost stories in the dialect and put them side by side” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “From ‘Uncle Remus’ ”