March 31 Sunday – Sam wrote a short note from Elmira to James R. Osgood, a Boston publisher with a list of prestigious authors, and editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Sam declined Osgood’s offer to publish a book of stories, citing his present binding contract with Bliss and “quite a portly volume” of sketches just sent to George Routledge [MTL 5: 72]. The “portly volume” amounted to two volumes: A Curious Dream; and Other Sketches, containing fifteen sketches as yet unprinted in England; and Mark Twain’s Sketches, 66 stories including the fifteen in A Curious Dream. Included were the Routledge 1870 version of Jumping Frog as well as two small collections, Eye Openers and Screamers. Some of these latter stories had been published in England without Sam’s approval. Routledge had a New York agent, Joseph L. Blamire, who facilitated interaction with Sam [MTL 5: 73n4].

W.J. Babcock in Hartford sent a poem written in 1819 by Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847) [MTP]. Note: Babcock, “Professor of music. Teacher of the Piano Forte, Organ and Singing. And sole Agent for the sale of the Chickering & Co.’s splendid piano Fortes” [MTL 4: 445n2].