May 21 Tuesday – At the Hotel Vendome in Boston, William Dean Howells wrote a short note to Sam, enclosing a letter from Thomas S. Perry, who had taught at Harvard and was a regular reviewer of French and German books for the Atlantic under Howells. Perry’s letter related his and his wife’s time traveling through Italy and enjoying Innocents Abroad. Perry expressed his desire to write a serious article on Mark Twain. The Howellses, after the loss of their daughter Winny, were spending the summer in a Cambridge suburb, their grief magnified by the autopsy revelation that her problems were not psychological, as he’d supposed, but organic.

We are just going into summer quarters near by; with my address always in Harper’s c/o. We shall be just beyond Cambridge, not far from Winny’s grave, beside which I stretched myself the other day, and experienced what anguish a man can live through [MTHL 2: 603]. See n3 of this source for more on Winny’s treatment and death.

Frederick J. Hall (Chatto & Windus to Webster May 6 encl.) wrote to Sam answering his request for a reduced monthly allowance of $1,000. In late March Sam had requested twice that amount monthly. Hall responded:

As you know the dull season is upon us…and while I hope to make this dull season a very much better one than it has been heretofore, it is hardly possible to do much more than enough business to keep the office going, so I think it would be well for you, if you could, not to count on getting any money from us until Fall, as it might embarrass us somewhat [MTNJ 3: 464n196].

Charles H. Taylor for Boston Globe wrote to Sam enclosing letter from Victor F. Lawson, publisher of the Chicago Daily News to Taylor, May 18. Lawson estimated gas expense at 23 cents per day for an 8 & ½ hour day and cost of metal per day at not over five cents. Sam had inquired of Taylor for these expenses [MTP].