October 15 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster. Orion’s “skeletons” for the board game had arrived, though he’d been sick. He sent them on to Webster. Sam noted a check received from American Publishing Co. and that they’d “sold as many old books in the last 3 months as Osgood has new ones.” Also, the secretary for Livy had arrived [MTBus 223].
Sam also wrote to Howells, who wrote Oct. 12 that he could come to Hartford in “about ten days” to collaborate on “Colonel Sellers as a Scientist” play. Elinor Howells would come a bit later [MTHL 1: 444].
My Dear Howells —
Your letter must have reached here Saturday, but I didn’t run across it till this minute—it lay under the newspaper mail.
Good—then I will expect you at the time specified, & Mrs. Howells at the time which she has selected; & ye will both be welcome.
As to the apportionment of spoil, it would in most any play but this, be half & half, naturally & of course; but in this case I will smouch two-thirds if the reasons & arguments which I shall lay before you shall convince & wholly satisfy you; but if they shouldn’t, the apportionment will then be equal division of the swag, & no cussing…. Ys Ever Mark [444-5].
Sam felt he deserved a larger share of the royalties for having creating the Sellers character. Howells was negotiating with the Mallory brothers for production of the play, and had recently returned from a visit with his father, who had moved to Virginia. Most often they dealt with Marshall Mallory.
Richard Watson Gilder wrote: “the Century thinks it about time that you should contribute something to its classic pages.” He suggested a piece of an old fool arguing against int’l copyright [MTP].
Worden & Co. (telegram): “Please remit us fifteen hundred dollars O T closed forty two shall we buy one hundred at forty as ordered” [MTP]. Note: Oregon Transcontinental.
October, second half – Sam may have spent some time in New York, where the Thatcher, Primrose and West’s Minstrels performed through Nov. 3 or 4 [N.Y. Times, Oct. 30, 1883 p.5]. Sam copied the words to “There is a happy land” in his notebook and in autobiographical dictation of Nov. 30 1906 recalled,
“I heard Billy Rice sing it in the negro minstrel show, and I brought it home and sang it—with great spirit—for the elevation of the household. The children admired it to the limit, and made me sing it with burdensome frequency. To their minds it was superior to the Battle Hymn of the Republic” [Gribben 794]. Note: Billy Rice played with West’s Minstrels in New York City in Feb. and Oct. of 1883. Sam did not go to New York in Feb. He may have caught the minstrel show in another city at another time.