August 9 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to William Dean Howells after receiving his letter. Sam mentioned the Tilden club invitation and his answer, Susy’s larger shoes (which she used as an excuse not to be able to pray), the idyllic setting of Quarry Farm and this noteworthy item:

“I have written 400 pages on it—therefore it is very nearly half done. It is Huck Finn’s Autobiography. I like it only tolerably well, as far as I have got, & may possibly pigeon-hole or burn the MS when it is done” [MTLE 1: 98]. Thank God Sam didn’t burn it, but pigeonhole it he did, not to be completed until 1883 and printed first in England in 1884, in the U.S. in 1885. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered Sam’s masterpiece.