January 25 Saturday – After his Jan. 23 dinner at the Union League Club, William Dean Howells stopped off at Hartford, probably staying the night. He wrote to Sam of the visit and his departure on Jan. 28 and also on Feb. 2 to his father [MTHL 2: 628&n4].

The Critic reviewed the stage version of P&P.

[Mrs. Richardson who prepared the play for the stage,] has done her part of the work as well, perhaps, as could be expected; but the piece, as it stands, has no real value, and would have but a poor chance of success without a public favorite like Elsie Leslie to play the two principal characters…. The improbabilities, not to say absurdities, of all this are much more apparent in a play than in the original story…. The best act, artistically, is the last, in which a good deal of the original dialogue is preserved, including some happy examples of Mark Twain’s peculiar humor [Tenney 18].

John (“Jock”) Brown, Dr. Brown’s son wrote from Edinburgh, Scotland to Sam:

I think it as well to send you by letter post another copy of the little book as you may not get the first….If I do not hear from you I will know you have got one or other copy [Gribben 444]. Note: The “little book” was Elizabeth T. McLaren’s Dr. John Brown and his Sister Isabella: Outlines. (1882). See also Dec. 28, 1889.

Frederick J. Hall wrote from the Hotel Continental in Paris to Sam. Since Edward Marston had said he would not, could not do anything on the Stanley book matter for a week or ten days, Hall went to Paris, where he reported paying less for board while he waited; Hall did not hold out hope for an agreement with Samson Low & Co., and so planned on sailing home Feb. 5 on the City of Paris [MTP].