February 10 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster, again about Marshall Mallory. Sam seems to have cooled off some from the angry tone of his Feb. 8 letter to Webster.

You may drop a note to Mr. Mallory & say I don’t think the Sellers play would be sufficiently profitable to any of us with the gains divided into thirds. And say to him, likewise I am now writing a new play by myself (while Howells & I are kept asunder by Cable’s illness,) & that if I finish it to my liking maybe we can strike up some terms for it which will be mutually satisfactory. It is a 4-act play, & two acts are nearly done. I think I can finish it in a couple of weeks, but of course I can’t tell for sure. I’m kind of boiling with it, & so it gets on paper pretty fast [MTBus 234].

Samuel Webster, Charles Webster’s son, in Mark Twain Business Man, succinctly expresses the difficulties Sam had placed his father in about stage plays:

“I don’t quite know how the play business was run in those days, and I don’t believe Uncle Sam knew either. He seems to want to begin with the actors before he has a producer, and he has an idea that the producer is going to offer a good price for a play he’s never seen, and he’s not going to let him read it until he gets his terms, and then if he wants to make anything out of it Uncle Sam will tell him where he gets off” [MTBus 235].

George W. Cable had improved, and wrote his wife:

      I have seen some friends today who dropped in from church, telling what a fine sermon Mr. Twichell had just preached. First, Mrs. Chas Dudley Warner & then Mr. George Warner. Mrs. Clemens, too, came into my room & Dr. Davis, my physician…

      After my dinner I returned to the library & had a long chat with Mark Twain. Now he has gone out with the children for a walk, Mrs. Clemens is upstairs, my nurse lies fast asleep on the lounge just beside me, & all is still. I look out upon the snowy prospect & think of home.

      Clemens has finished the play he was writing when I fell ill and has commenced a new work. He is in splendid working trim. I seem to have made great way in the hearts of these dear good people. Clemens, specially, seems to warm to me more & more [Turner, MT & GWC 30]. Note: The plays Sam was working on during this period were Colonel Sellers as a Scientist, and on dramatizations of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and P&P.

Joe Goodman wrote thanking Sam; the “Carson Fossil-Footprints” article arrived in California on Feb. 6. Joe loved the piece:

God bless you for the article!…You evidently do not know how good it is. I never saw anything from your pen that had more broad-gauge fun in it—and with never an intermission from beginning to end. McEwan and Flynn—who make some pretensions to humor—read it separately, and both laughed till they became hysterical.

Joe told Sam of two changes (he called “liberties”) he was making to the MS—placing Sam’s name at the head of it, and spelling out Daggett’s name instead of using initials:

“Daggett has become a public character, and likes to see his name in print in any connection that will give it currency. …I trust you do not grudge him assistance.”

Joe had followed Sam’s career from afar and was prescient about the disposition of HF:

I see by the papers that you are going to write a sequel to “Tom Sawyer” at last. I’ve often wondered why you didn’t do it—it was such a good subject, and so ready to hand. You’re at your best in recalling to your readers recollections of their boyhood, and you left Tom and Huck just at the most interesting period of their lives. I suppose you will let Huck drift West, augment himself, and become a Sagebrush Statesman or hero [MTP].