June 9 Wednesday – Sam wrote two letters from Hartford to William Dean Howells. The first was about the visit of Sylvester Baxter (“Mr. B.”) who stayed at Sam’s a day or two (Sam wrote “during 24 hours”) to gather information for an interview (see June 8 entry).

“A kind-hearted, well-meaning corpse was this Boston young man, but lawsy bless me, horribly dull company. Now old man, unless you have great confidence in Mr.B.s judgment, you ought to make him submit his article to you before he prints it” [MTLE 5: 121].

The second letter dealt again with Orion’s autobiographical manuscript. Sam thought the result was “killingly entertaining; in parts absolutely delicious.” Sam was going to send Howells a hundred pages of the manuscript to consider at ordinary rates and print anonymously [MTLE 5: 122].