November 21 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells.

“Good—& all right. Within an hour I shall be deep in an old piece of work which always interests me, any time of the year that I take it up. So I will go down into that, & not appear at the surface again till the Howellses arrive here the 3d of December” [MTHL 1: 451].

Sam included more ideas on the Sellers as a Scientist play. He complimented Howells on the new typewriter he was using to write letters. He announced that George W. Cable was “stopping with us over night” and that he’d been training for public speaking and reading. The writing Sam referred to was possibly the Sandwich Islands story about Bill Ragsdale, a half-caste interpreter he had met on his Hawaii trip [MTHL 1: 451-2]. Emerson writes Sam began the book in Jan. 1884; it “was to be a serious work” [160]. (See Jan. 30 to Fairbanks.)

Cable left for Springfield, Mass., where in the evening he gave a private reading to a group of about 20 ladies [Bickle 108]. Note: Cable then continued on to Boston where he was the guest of several gatherings and gave readings at Chickering Hall, which held, by his estimate, about 460 persons. In Boston, Cable met all the notables (see Bickle, p 110-111).