July 24 Wednesday – Back in Elmira Sam wrote to William Dean Howells, sorry they hadn’t been able to meet while he was in Hartford. Sam suggested a surreptitious meeting:

I expect to go to Hartford again in August & maybe remain till I have to come back here & fetch the family. And, along there in August, some time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, & I will let on that I am going to Spitzbergen, & then under cover of this clever strategem we will glide from the trains at Worcester & have a time [MTHL 2: 607-8].

Sam also wrote a short note to Frederick J. Hall, that he requested be sent on to Daniel Carter Beard, who Sam had chosen to illustrate CY. After some thought, Sam decided that Beard should “obey his own inspiration,” that he wanted “his genius wholly umhampered,” and then Sam wouldn’t “have any fears as to the result” [MTLTP 253].

Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam again about Beard illustrating CY, and recalled that it took Edward Windsor Kemble “about two months” to illustrate the Library of Humor. He noted that Beard’s drawings would be much more detailed, that Beard and his brother would give all their time to the drawings but thought “even at that rate they say it would be impossible to have the thing completed before the first of November.” Hall suggested ways to hurry the book along, by making the cover stamp first and completing covers “By the time the last illustrations are ready…” Hall aimed at mid to late Nov. for issue [MTLTP 254n1].