March 26 Thursday – Sam and Livy returned home from Boston on Mar. 25 or 26.

Sam wrote on this day to Howells, saying they had a “most noble good time in Boston…” He enclosed a penciled draft of a letter to Frank A. Nichols, secretary of the Concord, Mass. Free Trade Club, in response to Nichols’ notification that Sam had been elected an honorary member. Sam asked if Howells could:

“…read it, & riddle it & scarify it with expungings & other emendations, & get it right & the way it out to be, against the possible accident of its getting into print.”

Sam sent the praise of Clara Spaulding for Howells’ new book, The Rise of Silas Lapham, which was to be his masterpiece—“I & madam are clear behind with” the book, Sam confessed [MTHL 2: 524].

Mrs. A.A. Ward for Ladies Aid Society wrote from Vacaville, Calif. to ask for an autograph for their autograph quilt [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Cheek – not answered”