May 10 Monday – In Boston Sam went to the Howells’ residence, and after an hour talk with him, they came up with a plan for improving the Sellers as Scientist play and worked on it. He wrote Livy:

Livy, darling, I came up with Mr. Bartholomew all the way, & had a very pleasant trip. Stopped at the Vandome, [Vendome Hotel] & came over here an hour ago, where I’m not sure I was either welcome or expected. I haven’t seen any of the family yet but Howells & an accidental fleeting glimpse of Winnie in undress uniform….I love you, sweetheart — & those others [MTP]. Note: The Bartholomews lived on Capitol Avenue in Hartford. Mrs. Bartholomew started an embroidery club that Susy and Clara Clemens took part in [Salsbury 232].

L..       Hoffman writes:

“After a furious rewriting session, Sam left for New York determined to sign a contract for the play to open on May 24 at Daniel Frohman’s Lyceum Theatre. Howells took that time to reconsider the wisdom of mounting” the play [334].

One likely chronology here is from MTHL 2: 557-8n5:

“…he and Howells worked on the play Sunday evening and possibly Monday morning; and that Clemens took the MS back to Hartford with him Monday afternoon and to New York on Tuesday.” Note: the problem with this itinerary is that his letter above puts his arrival at Howells’ home on this day, Monday, not Sunday evening. Since Howells had given great thought to possible improvements, they may have completed the work in a few hours on this day. An all-nighter may have been recalled years later.

The two men agreed to let Alfred P. Burbank have the play. Sam returned to Hartford. In 1910 William Dean Howells wrote of his struggle the night that Sam left:

…the cold fit came upon me, and “in visions of the night, in slumberings upon the bed,” ghastly forms of failure appalled me, and when I rose in the morning I wrote him:…”Here is a play which every manager has put out-of-doors and which every actor known to us has refused, and now we go and give it to an elocutioner [Burbank]. We are fools.” …So hard does the faith of the unsuccessful dramatist in his work die! [MMT 26].