January 8 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Louise Chandler Moulton about her article on his “pet detestation,” Rabelais.

“Did you know, I have often had more than half a mind to go over & dig up Rabelais & throw his bones” away? [MTL 6: 343].

James T. Fields wrote to Clemens after his visit of Jan. 7.

My dear Clemens. / Thanks, many and lot, for your parody which so delighted me then, & delights me now. At dinner today I will read it to my Dame, who will rejoice over it with me I know.

How good it is to be home! I am beginning to hate lecturing and will give it up, please God, ere long.

Those dear little people in your nursery left a sweet & rememberable picture in my mind. Ah! if we could always keep them in the nursery, young and unfledged!

Enclosed you will find the amt. for which my carriage-knave took me by the throat on your doorstep.

Cordially Yrs. / James T. Fields [MTPO].

William Dean Howells sent DeForest to Howells Jan. 5 without any note [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “From Howells / Enclosing compliment from De Forest the novelist”