July 25 Thursday – Bill dated June 3 was paid to G.W. Woolley & Son, mfrs. of burial caskets and coffins, 175 Main St., Hartford, for supplying a covered casket, satin-lined for $50 for Langdon [MTP].

In Morristown, New Jersey, Bret Harte wrote to Sam shortly after the birth of Harte’s first daughter, Jessamy Harte. Like Sam, Harte found it difficult to write in a house with a crying baby.

“Could not you and I find some quiet rural retreat this summer where we could establish ourselves (after your Elmira or Buffalo fashion) in some empty farm house a mile or two from our families, and do or work with precious intervals, of smoking, coming home to dinner at abt. 3 P.M? Think of it” [Duckett 81; MTPO]. Note: Harte thanked Clemens for two letters here, which are lost.

July 25–27? Saturday – Sam wrote from New Saybrook again to Mollie Clemens, this time about monogrammed paper from a Boston stationer he had designed and ordered. The paper, two types, arrived at the Hartford house on July 24. Sam used both types of paper from Aug. through Dec. 1872 and sometimes in early 1873 [MTL 5: 132-3].