February 22 Saturday – † On or just after this day Sam sent the Feb. 21 Webster & Co. inquiry about Lounsbury to Twichell: Dear Joe:/ ? / Ys Ever/ Mark./ ~ [MTP].

The Critic reviewed CY:

We do not at all approve of Mark’s performance; it is very naughty indeed: but — and that is all he and his publishers want — we cannot help laughing at it [Tenney 18].

Likewise, there were plenty of scalding notices on the other side of the pond. This day from James Ashcroft Noble of the London Academy, p.130:

Mark Twain’s new book is utterly unworthy of him. Though burlesque is the cheapest kind of humor which can be produced by men whose humorous facility is of the slenderest sort …if we laugh at the new book we are ashamed of ourselves.

Mollie Clemens wrote to Sam and Livy, wishing them health. She was excited about the typesetter.

Ma has come out wonderfully tho not as well as she was before. She has so little memory left when she does say any thing like herself it rather surprises us…she thinks you are a little bad boy, the most of the time. Her children are all small and she must go home to them. Write when you can [MTP].