December 4 Saturday – In Hartford Sam, per Franklin G. Whitmore, wrote to Charles E. Lewis who had written Dec. 1 asking to negotiate dramatizations of HF. Whitmore replied for Sam that “while the story might be successfully dramatized & the character of Huck well personated by Miss Lewis,” that Sam was not interested [MTP].

Calvin H. Higbie, Sam’s old mining partner of the “Blind Lead,” wrote from Greenville, Plumas Co., Calif., asking for a loan of $20,000 in return for a half interest in a mine he’d been working. “What do you think of that?” he asked right off the top.

You can’t imagine how much a little money will help me now in this grand effort, to make a little stake, and settle down in some quiet retreat, and tell the grand children in the comeing [sic] years, of the generosity, & kindness of my Old acquaintance, Mark Twain, that I used to feed on hot cakes three times a day, when we lived in that mansion just 11 feet square. Yours Fraternally, C.H. Higbie [MTP].

Caroline B. Le Row began a letter she finished on Dec. 11. The lady was “mixed” and thought Sam’s advice about her literary undertaking, “paradoxical.” [MTP].

Charles Webster wrote from N.Y. to Sam once again pumping for a book from Henry M. Stanley, whom he didn’t “suppose” had “exhausted half his African matter yet” [MTP].