January 26 Friday – Edmund C. Stedman wrote from NYC.

      My two days’ journey in Connecticut, and the winter idyl of twenty-four hours in your beautiful home [Jan. 22], seem already like an aurora borealis—or like a fire-light dream, & about the only cheerful dream I’ve had this season.

      —After telling Mrs. Clemens & yourself how much I enjoyed it, & thanking you for making me so instantly & constantly at home, I must hasten to set myself “right upon the record.” I now have read “The Prince & the Pauper”—and at a sitting, for no one who once dips into it will or can read it otherwise.

 [MTP]. Note: he sent a copy of the “English (& eclectic) edition of verse,” which Gribben identifies as Lyrics and Idylls, with Other Poems (1879) [660].