January 25 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Joe Twichell complimenting him on his speech of the previous evening.

It is a great & admirable performance, & does you infinite credit. It must have cost prodigious labor to prepare it…. Livy buried me under reproaches last night, because I was absent, & she made me feel sorry & ashamed…but I am not sorry now; I could reflect — & leisurely reflect — as I read you this morning, whereas you would have allowed me no time for that…

I have sent a copy to Chauncey Depew. He is orator at the coming Constitutional celebration, & he can’t claim ignorance, now, if he fails to do justice to Connecticut.

I think you have painted Thomas Hooker for all time; it must remain the original, the master-work; all that follow will be merely copies [MTP].

Note: Chauncey Depew (1834-1928), later U.S. senator for N.Y., lawyer, railroad executive, Yale alumnus, best remembered as an orator and raconteur, unsuccessful presidential candidate. Thomas Hooker (1586-1647) was one of the founders of the colony of Connecticut.

Thomas Frazer Reddy, Boston attorney wrote to Sam that he had nearly completed writing a dramatization of P&P and that they both should make some “pecuniary benefit” from it [MTP].