May 19 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam responded to William Dean Howells’ of May 18. Sam’s tone was much more conciliatory and resigned.

Confound it, isn’t there any way to load you up with remorse so that it will stay? I never saw such an obstinate subject. However, you’ve done your full share of suffering, & I give you absolution….I can’t bear to use that article you sent me [the check for $500], it goes so against the grain. I must wait at least twelve days [the check was postdated]. I must try to invent some way to render it unnecessary altogether.

Sam then related a “most curious & pathetic romance,” about his mother’s long-lost lover, and her revelation to Sam through her daughter Pamela Moffett, who visited the Clemenses from May 13-20. The story goes that Jane Clemens had prevailed in her wish to travel to a Tri-State Old Settlers Association reunion in Keokuk in late Sept., 1885; the object of her journey to see Dr. Richard Barrett, who had been Jane’s lover and intended betrothed. Due to Barrett’s loose lips of his intention to propose to Jane, she refused to go on a buggy trip, and shortly thereafter married John Marshall Clemens for spite. After 64 years, Jane found that she’d missed Barrett by three hours at the reunion, and promptly returned home. Sam added:

Since then, her memory is wholly faded out & gone; & now she writes letters to the school-mates who have been dead forty years, & wonders why they neglect her & do not answer. Think of her carrying that pathetic burden in her old heart sixty-four years, & no human being ever suspecting it! MTHL 2: 566-8]. Note: Richard Barrett actually died in 1860 in Iowa. The story was filtered through Jane’s memory of distant events, and through the retelling within the family, so details may be suspect.

Prudence Crandall Philleo wrote to Sam thanking him for his “dear photographed countenance.” Sam wrote on the envelope, “The Connecticut anti-slavery heroine of 53 years ago — Prudence Crandall” [MTP].