May 23 Sunday – In Boston, Howells responded to Sam’s May 19 letter:

I never read a more pathetic story than that you tell me of your mother. After all how poor and hackneyed all the inventions are, compared with the simple and stately facts! Who could have imagined such a heartbreak as that? Yet it went along with the fulfillment of duty, and made no more noise than a grave underfoot. I doubt if fiction will ever get the knack of such things. How could it represent them? [MTHL 2: 569].

Note: Howells realized that even stark literary realism could not exceed truth’s “stranger than fiction” occurrences. He was at work on a new story, April Hopes, which would run in Harper’s Feb-Nov 1887, and already regretting his obligation to produce the “Editor’s Study” articles for that magazine.

George E. Waring wrote from Boston of changed plans — he’d intended to come the next week with his assistant Chapman and give Sam an estimate for “changing your [illegible word — charts?] but had to suddenly to Canada. Waring wanted to send his assistant for the estimate, as he was “intelligent and knows his business” [MTP]. Note: This may have to do with drawings for the typesetter.