February 1 Monday – In Hartford Sam replied to the Dec. 12, 1874 from Charles Warren Stoddard, a long letter from London about his travels and mutual friends. Stoddard wrote travel letters for the San Francisco Chronicle, and was in Rome the previous year.

Dear Charley: /All right about the Tichborne scrap-books; send them along when convenient. I mean to have the Beecher-Tilton trial scrap-booked as a companion. At present I believe I would rather go down in history as the Claimant than as Mr. Beecher. Both men’s fame will outlast yours & mine.

I was very sorry to hear of your fearful accident in Rome. How in the world did it happen? Lady Hardy spoke of it in a letter, but gave no particulars. And tell me—who did Mulford marry? Was she English? Had she money? For when we saw him last he was surely in no condition to marry.

By the way, Bierce is writing some exquisite things for “Fun”—a school-boy’s compositions upon natural history—& they do lay a long way over any body else’s attempts in that line that ever ventured into it. They are just delicious.

I hope you will remember me kindly to your friend (& mine) Rev. John Kreger [sic Kroeger] of Loreto, when you write him. This reminds me that Rev. Jo. Twichell (my pastor) & I are going to Worcester, Mass., to have “a time” with a most jolly & delightful Jesuit priest who was all through the war with Joe. Jo was chaplain of a regiment & I suppose the padre was also. I sent the padre word that I knew all about the Jesuits, from the Sunday school books, & that I was well aware that he wanted to get Jo & me into his den & skin us to make religious parchments out of, after the ancient style of his communion since the days of good Loyola, but that I was willing to chance it & trust to Providence.

I am writing a series of 7-page articles for the Atlantic at $20 a page; but as they do not pay anybody else as much as that for prose, I do not complain, (though at the same time I do swear that I am content.) However the awful respectability of the magazine makes up.

I have cut your delightful article about San Marco out of a New York paper (Joe Twichell saw it & brought it home to me with loud admiration) & sent it to Howells. It is too bad to fool away such literature in a perishable daily journal.

Do remember me kindly to Lady Hardy & all that rare family—my wife & I so often have pleasant talks about them.

Ever Yr friend

Samℓ. L. Clemens

[MTL 6: 363-68; MTPO]. Notes: Clemens was fond of Lady Mary Anne Hardy, husband Sir Thomas Dufus Hardy, and daughter Iza Hardy from his 1873 trip to London. Prentice Mulford (“Dogberry”; 1834-1891); John Kroeger (1826-1878) of Indiana; Joseph B. O’Hagan was Twichell’s wartime friend & clergyman. See source notes for more details.