August 14 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Benjamin H. Ticknor about the advertising circular for P&P, and the illustrations he’d chosen for a run of 20 special books. Frank T. Merrill was the principal illustrator of the book and Sam wrote:

“Merrill probably thinks he originated his exquisite boys himself, but I was ahead of him there!—in these pictures they look and dress exactly as I used to see them in my mind two years ago. It is a vast pleasure to see them cast in the flesh, so to speak—they were of but perishable dream-stuff before” [MTLTP 140]