September – In the Century Magazine for the month, William Dean Howells published what Powers calls “one of the earliest appreciations” of Sam Clemens’ literature. Howells compared Sam’s originality with humor as a form to Shakespeare’s use of poetry as poetical. He explained the difference between “merely facetious” humorists such as Josh Billings or the late Artemus Ward and Sam’s use of humor” [MT A Life 464]. See MMT 134-44 for the entire text.

“… I warn the reader that if he leaves out of the account an indignant sense of right and wrong, a scorn of all affectation and pretense, an ardent hate of meanness and injustice, he will come indefinitely short of knowing Mark Twain.” – W.D. Howells in the Century, September 1882

Sam wrote to Charles Webster, enclosing an advertisement to sell $5,000 of stock in the Independent Watch Co of Fredonia. Sam wanted the ad run once in the Buffalo Courier Express, the Censor, Advertiser, Union newspapers and also on posters in Fredonia [MTP].

September, before 28th – Sam telegraphed Charles Webster from Elmira about a company publishing some of his old jokes and using his name to sell material he did not write [MTBus 198].