March 20 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood, acknowledging receipt of $5,000. Sam matched the amount and “paid off that old endorsement”—probably settling accounts on LM, which Sam had agreed to produce at his cost, with a royalty going to Osgood. He encouraged a prize for subscription sellers who reached 400 sales of LM. Sam was also afflicted:

“Publicly, I’m confined to the house with rheumatism; but under the holy seal of secrecy I reveal to you that it is gout. I suppose this comes of high living when I was a boy—corn-dodgers and catfish. / Yrs Truly SLC” [MTLTP 167].

Sam also wrote to Charles Webster, asking him to send him an unbound copy of Bayard Taylor’s translation of Göthe’s Faust. Sam wanted to divide it into 100-page sections to read in bed [MTP].

In Boston, Howells wrote a short note to Sam, asking whether he wanted him to see John T. Raymond again. Sam had had a cold and Howells assumed that it had worsened, which is why he hadn’t answered his last letter [MTHL 2: 480].