January 7 Monday – Livy sent out invitations from her and Sam to John Day and Alice Hooker Day, requesting the pleasure of their: “…company to meet Mr. & Mrs. T.B. Aldrich on Wednesday evening, Jan 9th at 8 o’clock” [MTP].

Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells. His son, John Howells, had a touch of scarlet fever.

“The bare suggestion of scarlet fever in the family makes me shudder; I believe I would almost rather have Osgood publish a book for me” [MTHL 2: 460].

Sam was still trying to find a producer for their play, “Colonel Sellers as a Scientist.” He also had been working on a book about Bill Ragsdale, interpreter to the Hawaiian Parliament, who Sam had met on his 1866 trip to the islands. Sam decided later not to publish the book. Only a seventeen-page fragment of the book survives.

My billiard table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich Islands; the walls are upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with notes drawn from them. I have saturated myself with knowledge of that unimaginably beautiful land & that most strange & fascinating people. And I have begun a story. Its hidden motive will illustrate a but-little considered fact in human nature: that the religious folly you are born in you will die in…[460-1].

Sam also wrote to Charles Webster.

“Am Pub check for $1081.32 received. I see they’ve sold 4,500 old books in the past 3 months. I wish to God Osgood could sell half as many new ones.

I suppose we shall find that Raymond has not lost his right to that old play” [MTBus 232].

James Sutherland wrote from Montreal to Sam, advising he’d sent a souvenir from Montreal through Boston, from “the young fellow who had the honor –which he so much appreciated –of dining with you, in company of Mr. Geo Iles at the Windsor Hotel here in May last” [MTP]. Note: the souvenir is not identified, but was for Sam’s girls.