December 23 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote to William Dean Howells.

The magazine [Harper’s] came last night, & the Study notice [“Editor’s Study” review of CY] is just great. The satisfaction it affords me could not be more prodigious if the book deserved every word of it: & maybe it does; I hope it does, though of course I can’t realize it & believe it. But I am your grateful servant, anyway & always.

Sam related that he’d read the “old Tennessee woman’s” letter to Livy and Miss Fanny Hesse (his sometimes secretary) and they thought it “an impressively extraordinary production, to come from such a source & from such a region.” Sam wrote he was to read to the West Point cadets on Jan. 11, and wanted Howells to go with him. He was going to read passages from CY. Sam also wanted a day or two visit from Howells toward the end of January, and wanted to hear the rest of W.D.’s experimental novel, The Shadow of a Dream. He promised that Joe Goodman would be “on hand again by that time,” and Sam wanted Howells “to get to know him thoroughly.” The Clemens family was “in the full rush of the holidays” [MTHL 2: 625].

George Standring wrote from London to thank Sam for the “very handsome” copy of CY. He enclosed a clipping from a trade journal (not extant) about the Linotype machine; and reported that the Pall Mall Gazette regarded the whole Paige typesetter promotion as a joke of Twain’s; and that three days prior the paper had taken Sam to task for “vulgarising and debasing the Arthurian legend!” [MTP].

Frederick J. Hall wrote Sam more about Samson Low & Co. and the proposed Stanley book. More strategy and couching terms and promises here. Thomas M. Williams was the new man on the LAL and he would begin work on Dec. 27. Hall was prepared to sail for London in mid-January to negotiate. [MTP].

Edmund C. Stedman wrote to thank Sam for his copy of CY; due to the death of his mother and pressing needs of LAL he had not yet been able to read it; it was “uncommonly fine” of Sam to acknowledge Stedman’s “very slight service” on the fly-leaf of his copy [MTP].