February 26 Tuesday – Howells responded to Sam’s letter of Feb. 18 that he was “down in the dust at the notion” that he’d made Sam “take a journey to New York and back for nothing….” Sam answered:

“Ah, what the reader puts into a letter, that is what said reader finds in it! There couldn’t have been any irascibility in my letter, for the reason that there wasn’t any in me” [MTHL 2: 476].

Sam reported on dramatic royalties he’d found, and said that Mallory had the new Sellers play but Sam had “no faith in his being able to find the right man for it.” He asked if Howells had blocked out the Sandwich Island play (about Ragsdale) [476].

Sam wrote his regrets to John McK. McCarthy of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, a group founded in Philadelphia in 1771 for relief of Irish emigrants. He would be unable to join them for the Mar. 17 celebration [MTP]. Note: Sam often disparaged the Irish.

On or just after this day, Sam wrote from Hartford to James B. Pond on a Feb. 26 note from Charles Fairchild “Many thanks for the information about the Bad-Boy play—& love to you & Cable [MTP]. Fairchild’s note was about the whereabouts of Cable.