October 27 Sunday – William Dean Howells wrote again, unable to come for the visit he’d planned.

I am awfully sorry to put myself off; but we are blistering under the curse of house-hunting, and till something is decided, we are mere shrieks of agony. May I ask myself on a little later?

The book is glorious — simply noble. What masses of virgin truth never touched in print before!

Would the book make it out by Dec. 20? He didn’t want to “make a fool of the Study” [MTHL 2: 617].

In Hartford, Sam wrote in response to Daniel Frohman, theatre manager and impresario, that it was unlikely in “the guest season…in full bloom, now, for the winter,” that they would get to New York before the end of the year. Frohman had given dates he wished the Clemenses to attend his productions. Sam would let him know if things changed [MTP].

Sam also responded to Robert Underwood Johnson’s proposal for him to come to Chicago for Authors’ Readings in the copyright cause. His note is not extant but here is the condition Sam put in his notebook that he wrote to Johnson on this day, one which was taken as a refusal:

Condition: I am not to go to Chicago to read unless the Authors secure Bellamy, Kennan, Roosevelt, Warner, Riley, Nye, Stockton / Wrote this to Johnson Oct. 27 [MTNJ 3: 525&n139].