December 12 Saturday – Charles Warren Stoddard wrote from Venice of his travels, preceded by this paragraph:

Dear Mark.

The day I left you in Liverpool I took the ferry for New Brighton, and saw you go out to sea with a strange mingling of pleasure and regret: you had been longing so for home that I rejoiced when I saw you actually on your way; but my life had to begin all over again. It seems to me that I am always doing that sort of thing; I get just so far and then somebody or something rubs it all out [MTPO]. Note: Sam answered on Feb. 1, 1875. The late Tom Tenney often insisted Stoddard was homosexual. If so, Clemens didn’t seem to mind.