February 8 Friday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished on Feb. 9.

Yours of Jan 17 has just arrived, in which you mention $200 check received from American Pub. Co. …I think this $200 must be part of the $1,500 which he was to pay for “Those Extraordinary Twins.”

The thing has happened which was bound to happen. Bliss got hold of Pudd’nhead so late that he lost the holiday trade; consequently achieved no sale.

News has just come that the interest on Mrs. Clemens’s Buffalo mortgage has defaulted. So that is $1,500 withdrawn from her bread and butter. Da-a-m — nation! Isn’t there ever going to come a turn!

Mr. Macgowen [James G. Macgowan] shipped that Tom Sawyer to you yesterday for me, and got it registered. I enclose the P.O. receipt.

Sam also announced he’d secured passage on the steamer New York the day before. Sam had also talked with William H. Libby, a friend of James G. Macgowan and learned that the sail from San Francisco and England by way of Australia was “delightful” and only $600 for one first-class ticket. Sam encouraged Rogers to go with them on the world tour — “This is our last chance to go around the world. If we don’t do it now we never shall” [MTHHR 128-31].

February 8 Friday ca. – About this day Franklin G. Whitmore sent an application of a possible tenant for the Clemens’ Hartford house. Not extant but mentioned in Henry C. Robinson’s Feb. 15 to John C. Day.