February 18 Sunday – In Hartford, Sam wrote a scorching letter to J.W. Bouton:

      Draw & be damned. I subscribed for your Portfolio one year & no more. I paid for it. Since then you have thrust it upon me & persecuted me with it at your own risk & in defiance of my several protests.

      You’ll “draw” on me! The hell you will! Messrs. Slote & Co. “refer” you to me. No!—why you can’t be in earnest. If they refer you to me, of course it must be all right. Dear me, why didn’t you get the peanut man on the corner to add HIS authority.

      Well, what a marvelous sort of publisher you must be, sure enough! You ought to write a book, & call it “How to Combine the Methods of the Highwayman & the Publisher Successfully.”

      I kiss you, Sweetheart!—Goodbye, good-bye—ta-ta!——ta-ta!

Dearest, I am / Truly Yours / S L Clemens [MTP; Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned Human Race (2004) p. 45]. Note: See Feb. 22 entry. In the latter source this was published under “An Unwanted Magazine Subscription,” which says it all. the Magazine was The Portfolio, An Artistic Periodical (London). In his Dec. 30, 1882 to Charles L. Webster, Sam explained he subscribed for one year but never subscribed again and “..have done my best to keep them from throwing away that excellent work on me….I wish you would explain the case to Mr. Bouton and have the periodical stopped before bloodshed [MTBus 206 cited by Gribben 555].

Frank M. Daulton wrote from Gainesville, Ark. He had a little house with 20 acres in the suburbs, “and about a shirt-tail full of type and an old army press…and making a totally good living.” He had plans for new equipment and an improved newspaper. He asked what happened to Orion and gave his love to Sam’s mother, if she was living [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Frank Daulton / ‘Old fellow printer’ in Hannibal”