January 9 Monday – At 11 A.M. Sam and Edward H. House called at the hotel where John Russell Young had been staying but he’d left on the 10:30 train. Later, Sam wrote from Hartford to Young:

“The prospective pleasure of writing that book [LM] grows with the moments; & already I foresee that in the building of it I am going to find a delight comparable to going to heaven.”

Sam asked Young to name a time when Sam might go to New York and get him to repeat what he’d told him the day before, so he might be able to correct and put dates in his notes.

“I spent nearly all night, last night, making notes, & consequently feel all burnt out to-day” [MTP].

Charles Webster wrote, enclosing a check from Am. Pub. Co. for $1,505.55, which he felt showed the last report was wrong. Webster asked for statements before 1880, and refused to receipt Am. Pub. Co. as “full to date.” Paige wanted $1,500 to “have the machine in shape for printing in a printing office” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Page will perfect for $1500”; Sam often misspelled Paige.

Reginald Cholmondeley wrote: “A short while ago while I was staying with [Sir John Everett] Millais in London I received your amusing & genial letter. I read in a N.S.W. [New South Wales] paper in Sydney a most apparently authentic account of your illness & death.” This about Sam’s “double” parading as the true Mark Twain. He’d been reading and enjoying TA. At the end of the letter he wrote, “When are you going to string up that contemptible humbug & murderer Giteau” [MTP].