June 11 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood:

“I wish you would set a cheap expert to work to collect local histories of Mississippi towns & a lot of other books relating to the river for me.

“Meantime all those people who promised to send such things to us ain’t doing it, dern them” [MTP].

Joel Chandler Harris’ unsigned review of The Stolen White Elephant ran in the Atlanta Constitution, p. 4, cols. 2-3 [Griska 585; Budd, Reviews 219-20]. Remarking that this was “the first book which Mr. Clemens has entrusted to the regular channels of the book trade, the only one which may be bought of any bookseller who may desire to keep it in stock,” Harris went on to praise the story for which the volume of sketches was named, and to offer a Howells-like analysis of Sam’s approach to humor:

It is in fact a pungent satire upon the fraudulent concerns known as detective agencies, and, as a satire, it points its own pithy moral. This is the unctuous feature that separates Mr. Clemens’s writings widely and permanently from the host of imitators that have sprung up, and from the bulk of the so-called humor of the day. Exaggeration is ludicrous, but it is not genuine humor; and the difference between Mark Twain and those who give forth exaggerations only is the fundamental difference that exists between emptiness and pungency. It is the difference that makes trash of one and literature of the other…. / Mr. Clemens’s humorous perceptions enable him to go to the very core of character, and his later work, notably “The Prince and the Pauper,” shows a remarkable development of the sense of artistic purpose and proportion [Griska 586-8].

Orion Clemens wrote a follow up progress report on Ma’s condition, which was good now and her mind clear [MTP].

Kate D. Barstow wrote from Wash. DC to Sam, homesick for “northern air.” She thanked Livy for the catalog sent (see May 7) and expected to draw on Sam for $25 for the next term of her medical studies. Evidently she planned on going to Elmira for she wanted to know when Sam would be there for a visit [MTP].