January 16 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam responded to Irving Bacheller of Bachellor & Johnson Syndicate, also known as The New York Press Syndicate.

I shall be too busy for the next two or three months to undertake that most difficult & bothersome thing, a short story…. In my experience it costs less work to write a big book…than it does to write a little story.

Sam did take “a day’s holiday from Joan and began a story in the afternoon and finished it at 11.10 p.m. — 6,200 words.” He and Livy decided however that “it was not in the bull’s eye,” and did not mail it. Sam could not make a definite commitment to Bacheller [MTP; Jan. 21 to Rogers].