August 18 Wednesday – Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892), poet and prose writer, whose stories Sam admired, wrote from Winsted, Conn.

Horrid man! how did you know the way I behave in a thunderstorm? Have you been secreted in the closet? or lurking on the shed roof? I hope you got thoroughly rained on!—And worst of all is that you made me laugh at myself: my real terrors turned around and grimaced at me: they were sublime, and you have made them ridiculous. Just come out here another year and have four houses within a few rods of you struck, and then see if you’ll write an article of such exasperating levity. I really hate you, but you are funny. How I should love to see you in a real hail and lightning jamboree just for once,—only I should never dare to look on! / I am not Mrs McWilliams, only / Rose Terry Cooke.

P.S. My husband says, “Tell him—‘Bully for you! it’s so, every bit of it.’” but he’s a man, too!

P.P.S. Don’t do so any more please! [MTP]. Note: see also Dec. 10, 1880; Jan. 10, 1880; Feb. 27, 1884; Gribben 158. In his July 4, 1877 to Wm. Dean Howells, Sam wrote of reading all of the Atlantic¸ and that “Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke’s story was a ten-strike. I wish she would write 12 old-time New England tales a year.”