March 1 Thursday ­– In Hartford, Sam typed a letter to Howells, who wrote on Feb. 10 from Florence, Italy, frustrated at not being able to write much, spending the prior two months there “chasing round after people for whom we cared nothing, and being chased by them” [MTHL 1: 425]. Howells hadn’t finished A Woman’s Reason, nor had the “put pen to paper on the play,” Colonel Sellers as a Scientist. Sam sympathized:

We got ourselves ground up in that same mill, once, in London, and another time in Paris. It is a kind of fore taste of hell. There is no way to avoid it except by the method which you have now chosen. One must live secretly and cut himself utterly off from the human race, or life in Europe becomes an unbearable burden and work an impossibility [426].

Sam was feeling liberated after finishing Life on the Mississippi. This period came before an extremely productive output during the summer.

I have been an utterly free person for a month or two; and I do not believe I ever so greatly appreciated and enjoyed and realized the absence of the chains of slavery as I do this time….Of course the highest pleasure to be got out of freedom, and the having nothing to do is labor. Therefore I labor. But I take my time about it. I work one hour or four as happens to suit my mind, and quit when I please. And so these are days of entire enjoyment [427].

Sam asked the Howellses to visit the Gerhardts if they got to Paris. He also remarked on the shocking number of deaths due to pneumonia for the winter season [428].

Sam also wrote to Christian B. Tauchnitz. Sam provided questions about The Jumping Frog book and disclosed buying and breaking up the plates for the book, then using parts of it for his Mark Twain Sketches book. He also asked to buy back issues bound for Tauchnitz’s Fliegende Blütter [MTP].

Sam left Hartford and went to New York City. There he played billiards with friends for two hours,

“…got to bed at 10, slept 8 solid hours, & got up as fine as a fiddle…” [Mar. 2 to Livy, MTP].

George B. Smith, Jr. wrote Sam from the National Soldiers Home in Togus, Maine, thanking him for $10 sent to his wife [MTP]. Note: this is not George Smith the publisher.