February 13 Saturday – In Hartford working away at Connecticut Yankee, Sam wrote to Charles Webster, instructing him to have the manuscript typed up that became McClellan’s Own Story in 1887 for William C. Prime. Sam’s pen was hot on the new story and he didn’t want to lose even a day going to New York on business. He thought Prime would understand.

For the first time in a long while, I am so situated that I can’t well leave home. I have begun a book, whose scene is laid far back in the twilight of tradition; I have saturated myself with the atmosphere of the day & the subject, & got myself into the swing of the work. If I peg away for some weeks without a break, I am safe; if I stop now for a day, I am unsafe, & may never get started right again…[Note: it was unusual for Sam to make such a commitment to writing while in Hartford. See Emerson, p.170 for some explanation].

Sam also said Clara Clemens was progressing from her badly sprained ankle, but was weak [MTP].

Sam also wrote a short note declining an invitation by Sara Thomson Kinney, wife of John C. Kinney, assistant editor on the Hartford Courant. Mrs. Kinney was for 30 years president of the Connecticut Indian Association with over 100 local women, including Harriet Beecher Stowe and other Nook Farm neighbors. Sam was not enthusiastic about charities benefiting Indians, though he reluctantly, so it seems, was added to Sara Kinney’s May 9, 1885 letter by twelve well-known Hartford men praising the work of the Indian Association. Sam also attended the May 15, 1885 lecture by Chauncey Depew, an event sponsored for the benefit of the Indian Association. Here Sam deftly turns aside an invitation for more support of some kind (her request is lost):

Dear Mrs. Kinney,

I have sworn off, in all sincerity; if this were not really and truly the case, I would say yes, at once, to your proposal. The Injun has lost a friend; but it was so ordained [MTP; Driscoll 7-23].

Note: The “friend” lost was Sam himself, who in 1884 and 1885 was composing Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians. Driscoll’s article is an in-depth and scholarly treatment of Sam’s ambivalence toward Indians, especially in his Hartford years.