March 18 Monday – Sam wrote to William Dean Howells, thanking him for sending his book, Their Wedding Journey. Sam wrote:

“I would like to send you a copy of my book, but I can’t get a copy myself, yet, because 30,000 people who have bought & paid for it have to have preference over the author” [MTL 5: 58].

Charles Dudley Warner gave RI a glowing review in the Hartford Courant:

The country reasonably and rightfully expects to be amused when Mr. Samuel L. Clemens gives it a new volume. His fun is contagious. He carries his personal manner into his writing, and is our most mirth-provoking story teller. His very deliberation, leisure and particularity, has come to be the known prologue to a hearty laugh. His fun is based on good sense. Behind the mask of the story-teller is the satirist, whose head is always clear, who is not imposed upon by shams, who hates all pretension, and who uses his humor, which is often extravagant, to make pretension and false dignity ridiculous (“Mark Twain’s New Book,” p1) [Budd, Reviews 100].