January 4 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Charles Webster answering questions about publishing a book by Henry Ward Beecher:

Yes, ½ profits is the right offer to make — his wide reputation entitles him to that — and if anybody wants to offer him more, we withdraw from the competition….If we can’t clear $40,000 for Beecher, at ½-profits, it’ll be the author’s fault, not the publisher’s; that is, it will mean that he isn’t as good a card as we think he is [MTBus 373].

Samuel Webster (son of Charles) writes, “If anything, Mark Twain was a little too much inclined to want to publish what his friends wrote, regardless of profit.”

Harriet G. Brown wrote what Sam labeled a “begging letter” from Manchester, N.H. She did not specify an amount, but only “a little from your abundance” [MTP].