July 29 Sunday – Livy wrote to Sam [LLMT 203-4] receiving two letters from him, because he offered no excuse for the delay in writing save the hours he’d spent and:

“…worked like a dog through this blistering weather & come home, whether early or late with the feeling that I couldn’t write”

Livy cautioned him not to talk against Harte, who Sam wrote had not “put in an appearance” [MTLE 2: 112].

The Brooklyn Eagle ran a column titled “DUAL DRAMATIC AUTHORSHIP” on page 2 about Sam and Bret Harte’s upcoming opening of the stage play, not mentioned here by name. The unsigned article pointed out that “some of the most successful of French plays have been the joint production of different minds,” but then explained why Sam and Harte’s humor was too different.

The essence of a comedy written by these two men must necessarily be the survival of Mark Twain and suppression of Bret Harte. Such was “Colonel Sellers.” …It would give more encouragement to believers in the American drama if the two humorists wrote apart.

M. Fagan wrote from the office, chief of Hartford police, reporting on absences of Sam’s servants, George Griffin and Mary [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env “George’s remissness”