December 13 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Howells suggesting Howells employ some ruse with his wife in order to:

…stay all night at the Parker House & tell lies & have an improving time, & take breakfast with me in the morning. I will have a good room for you & a fire. Can’t you tell her it always makes you sick to go home late at night, or something like that? That sort of thing rouses Mrs Clemens’s sympathies, easily; the only trouble is to keep them up [MTL 6: 315].

Charles Dudley Warner wrote from Cairo, Egypt to Sam:

“Your note followed me here. I sympathize with you in your unfinished house, but I would rather fit out three houses and fill them with furniture and children than to fit out one abatement. We have been here at work at it for over a week, and ought to embark tomorrow…but we shall go to the Pyramids instead” [MTP]. Note: “abatement” likely a calculation of duties on goods purchased.

The London Pall Mall Gazette ran an anonymous review of GA. Tenney: “A shallow response, commentary, noting the quotations in various language, some humor, and the greater insolence of American than British railroad officials. There is no discussion of the story” [Bibliography Number 6, Mark Twain Journal Spring/Fall 2012 50: 1 & 2, p.50].