July 15 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Howells, who wrote on July 2 and July 4. Howells had obtained the money elsewhere and told Sam to forget he’d asked. In the latter letter Howells wrote that he’d been notified by Webster that John T. Raymond had accepted their terms on the new Sellers play. Howells wasn’t certain he should let Raymond see the play. Sam responded:

I meant to write you that I told Webster to let Raymond see the play, but I have fooled around & neglected it. This fooling around has been done in the dental chair. I go down every other day & have one or two teeth gouged out & stuffed. I have been in the dental chair ten days, a couple of hours a day; & shall be there 3 days this week & I suppose as many more next week. The dentist is a bright man, & gouges & digs & saws & rasps & hammers, & keeps up a steady stream of entertaining talk, all the time, like his professional ancestor the barber; & so these have been very pleasant relaxations to me, & I shall be rather sorry to see them come to an end. They have been a vast improvement to me, too—an education; I can stand the most exquisite pain, now, without outward manifestation; & indeed without any very real discomfort. The Indian has fallen in my estimation; he is no better than you or me—he is merely a product of education. I have picked up a lot of good dental stuff, & I wish I had the time & energy to write it up. / On my off days I work at a new story (Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer among the Indians 40 or 50 years ago) [MTHL 2: 495-6].

Sam also wrote to James B. Pond. George W. Cable had agreed verbally to terms for a reading tour under Pond’s management. Sam didn’t want to be bothered by people writing him about the tour.

“I mean to forward the letters to you unanswered & depend on you to answer them. Is that satisfactory?” [MTP].

Sam then wrote to Charles Webster, directing him to draw up his contract with Pond. The readings were to begin after November 4, election day, and continue through February, with ten days off for the holidays. Pond would be paid $450 per week and expenses; Pond would accompany them or send his brother, furnish a treasurer, attend to all details that would come “under the head of business,” be “boss & head-ringmaster,” and “make the journeys as short & easy as circumstances will allow,” and receive “10 per cent of the profits of the raid for his services.” Several other details were listed, among which was the arrangement of the tour so that Sam could be in Canada December 18 to 20, in order to copyright Huckleberry Finn there, if the book was ready—of course, once more, Sam reminded Webster that this would depend on 40,000 orders; if that number hadn’t been reached then the tour would “be so arranged as to throw” him “into Canada 3 days again, 4 or 5 weeks later” [MTP].

Charles Webster wrote to Clemens about receiving letters from competing firms anxious to get HF. Bancroft & Co. in San Francisco wanted it badly but they hadn’t sold many books in the prior year, only 2,825. An unnamed firm claimed they were much better. He’d given up the Blaine book as it would interfere with the canvassing of HF. He liked the idea of “Huck among the Indians” [MTP].