October 11 Monday – Sam purchased one copy of Samuel Orchart Beeton’s Beeton’s Complete Letter-Writer for Ladies and Gentlemen (1873) [Gribben 57]. He also bought “1 City Directory” from Brown & Gross of Hartford [254].

Frank Soulé (enclosed in Howells’ Oct. 31) wrote to Clemens that “perhaps now I had better give up my ambition to publish, and consign my poems to the flames as I have sometimes almost sworn to do” [MTP].

Mrs. R.A. Candy wrote from St. Louis, Mich. to ask Clemens the same old questions about his birth and his nom de plume for her society paper [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Wants biographical data for paper – 1880”