December 20 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster about a gift Livy was purchasing for her mother [MTBus 230].

Sam also wrote to Howells with the idea to write “a tragedy” together for the new Sellers play and enclosed a scene based on Thomas Carlyle’s Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches.

The enclosed is not fancy, it is history—except that the little girl was a passing stranger & not kin to any of the parties.

I read the incident in Carlyle’s Cromwell a year ago & made a note in my notebook; stumbled on the note to-day, & wrote up the closing scene of a possible tragedy to see how it might work.

If we made this Colonel a grand fellow, & gave him a wife to suit—hey? It’s right in the big historical times—war,—Cromwell in big, picturesque power, & all that. Come—let’s do this tragedy, & do it well [MTHL 2: 455].

Sam also wrote to Laurence Hutton:

I enclose a small Xmas present ($15) for you. Spend it judiciously for whisky & in other pious ways, & always be thankful that you have friends about you like me, who will never see you come to want [MTNJ 3: 41n89].

Charles Webster wrote about business matters : his long hours lately, Christmas gifts for Livy; expected information from the Sunday Mercury [MTP].