December – Sam wrote from Hartford to an unidentified person:

“There is not a copy to be had. I bought the plates & stock 4 years ago & destroyed them” [MTP]. Note: Sam may have referred to The Jumping Frog book or Mark Twain’s Burlesque Autobiography.

Sam’s article, long delayed, “The Private History of a Campaign that Failed,” ran in the December issue of the Century Magazine. The series “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War” had been in the magazine for over a year, and was quite popular. Robert Underwood Johnson’s persistence resulted in Sam finishing the article. (See MTHL 2: 541n1.) Also in the magazine was “Wanted—A Universal Tinker,” signed by “X.Y.Z” [Camfield, bibliog.].

Sam’s notebook: “Valentino. Ch Scribner’s Sons,” evidently Sam’s intention to purchase William Waldorf Astor’s (1848-1919) Valentino. An Historical Romance of the Sixteenth Century in Italy (1885) [MTNJ 3: 216]. Astor was the son of John Jacob Astor, and this was his first literary work. In his planning for CY, there’s an entry: “remnants of monkish legends. Get them from Wm of Huntingdon” [Gribben 308]. (See Oct. 24 1877 entry for Sam’s purchase of this ancient history.)