October 27 Thursday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Charles Webster about a book of the late Nathaniel Judson Burton’s (he died Oct. 13) lectures and sermons that his son, Richard E. Burton had assembled. Sam enclosed a portrait that he wished Webster to find an engraver for who would “make as noble a portrait as his subject was” [MTLTP 237]. Burton (1824-1887) had been pastor of Hartford’s North Church of Christ since 1870. Andrews writes,

“He published nothing substantial, though after his death his son Richard, at Mark Twain’s suggestion, edited his lectures delivered at the Yale Divinity School and a dozen of what Mark called ‘those splendid preachments of his’ taken from the barrel. Mark overruled Charles Webster, his business partner, who probably thought the sermons unsalable, and thus preserved some of his friend’s life work” [42]. (See Oct. 30 entry.)

Though Webster & Co. Did publish the Burton book, it was “manufactured almost entirely in Hartford,” and “apparently sold from Hartford as well,” with Frederick J. Hall shipping paper for the book to the Star Company [MTLTP 238n3].