December 26 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Charles P. Green, Beresford House, Malvern, England, who had written Nov. 29 and sent an inscribed book.

The book arrived several days ago, but everybody in the house been so driven, during the past fortnight, with Xmas preparations, that none of us has had a chance to look at it yet [MTP].

Note: The book in question was John Palmer’s Journal of Travels in the United States of North America, and in Lower Canada,…in 1817 (1818) [Gribben 525]. Green’s identity was not determined.

Sam also wrote to Edward H. House, drawing a sketch of a house with a smoking chimney in place of his name in the salutation.

I’ve ordered a couple of P&P’s to be sent to you….Will see you when I come down, a week or ten days hence.

Sam said he would express his “absurd P&P dramatization” that day or the next [MTP]. Fatout writes that Sam sent two copies of P&P and “went to New York about a month later to discuss the play with him” [“MT Litigant” 34]. These details would become the crux of a court case brought by House in 1890.

Sam wrote to Charles Webster, ending the letter, “Poor General Logan!” (General John A. Logan died this day.) Sam asked for a couple of cloth or unbound copies of P&P to be sent to House. He also recommended a possible “assistant porter” for the Webster & Co. Office:

I know of a bright, strong & phenomenally active young mulatto who is out of work. Writes a good hand.

Sam added a P.S. that Livy wanted Webster to keep watch for places where she could “buy old hock glasses & old china” [MTP].

Orion Clemens wrote from Keokuk, thanking Sam and Livy for the $25 sent which would “annihilate chores this winter” — in other words, he would hire work he was unable to do. He also thanked them for their sympathy. “I laughed till I hurt my throat at the idea of a man having at once inflammatory rheumatism and St. Vitas’s dance. I wish it had been John Nye.” He also told of Ma’s imaginings, and of plans to buy her a nice chair with the money Sam sent [MTP].