October 24 Friday – After a seventeen month absence, the Clemens family returned home to Hartford and their Farmington Avenue house [MTLE 4: 111, 115]. From Twichell’s journal:

“Dear Mark Twain and his family are home again. We called on them in the evening. It seems only yesterday that we parted in Switzerland” [Yale, copy at MTP].

In Belmont, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, inviting him to the Holmes breakfast on Dec. 3. Also:

We got home last Saturday, and though we had a glorious time in Cleveland and elsewhere, we were glad to get home. John Hay lives in superb style, and a lovely house, and the only thing in which I had the better of him was your letter which came there. “Why don’t somebody write me such letters?” he sang out [MTHL 1: 276].