August 4 Thursday – The Clemens family left the Montowese House in Branford, Conn. headed to  Elmira with a stop in Hartford to do a few errands [MTNJ 2: 396n135]. Likely the day the Clemens family went to New York City. As was their custom, they probably stayed the night in a good hotel and continued on to Elmira the next day.

Joel Chandler Harris wrote from Atlanta to Sam

My Dear Mr. Clemens:— / You have pinned a proud feather in Uncle Remus’s cap. I do not know what higher honor he could desire than to appear before the Hartford public arm-in-arm with Mark Twain. Everybody has been kind to the old man, but you have been kindest of all. I am perfectly well aware that my book has no basis of literary art to stand upon; I know it is the matter and not the manner that has attracted public attention and won the consideration of people of taste at the North…

The ghost story you spoke of is new to me, and if I dared to trouble you I would ask you to send me the outlines so that I might verify it here. I do not remember to have heard it, but I do not by any means depend upon my own memory in matters of this kind. It is easy to get a story from a negro by giving him a sympathetic cue, but without this it is a hopeless task. If you have the story in manuscript, I would be very grateful to you for a sight of it; if not, I will try and find it here in some shape or other.

While I am writing, I may as well use the gimlet vigorously.—I have a number of fables ready to be written up, but I don’t want to push the public to the wall by printing them in magazines without intermission. I must ask your advice. Would it be better to print the new fables in a volume by themselves, or would it be better to bring out a revised edition of Uncle Remus, adding the new matter and issuing the volume as a subscription book? I am puzzled and bothered about it [MTP]. Note: see Sam’s reply of Aug. 10