March 17 Thursday – In Hartford Sam responded to an invitation by Annie A. Fields to stay with her during his planned Boston visit, to read “English As She Is Taught” at the Longfellow Memorial on Mar. 31. He accepted but warned of “timorous” misgivings:

I suspect I’m a smoky & uncomfortable guest for civilized folk [MTP]. Note: Sam usually did not like to stay in private homes, preferring the freedom of hotels; this may be an excuse.

Sam then wrote to Sarah Orne Jewett that the conflict between reading in Boston and New Haven on the same day might be fixed if she would give him “the very first reading in the programme,” so he might then take the 3 p.m. train, arriving in New Haven by 7 p.m. If that was agreeable, Sam would read “English As She Is Taught” [MTP].

Note: Sam may or may not have known at this point of the “Boston marriage” of Annie and Sarah O. Jewett.

Sam also wrote to Richard Watson Gilder, asking for a couple of proofs of “English As She Is Taught” to use in the Boston and New Haven readings on Mar. 31. Sam took liberties to read the article, which would appear on Apr. 1 in the Century Magazine, but he felt Gilder wouldn’t mind. By implication Gilder had granted the request for the Yale Kent Club reading.

There isn’t time to ask your permission for the brief Boston Museum reading, but you would grant it anyhow, for Brer Longfellow’s sake; & the Boston brethren are very urgent. Holmes, Lowell, Howells & Aldrich are in the list of readers [MTP].

Sam went to New York City, where he gave a speech/toast/talk at the informal Kinsmen Club (See Mar. 1883 entry for the history and makeup of this group, which did not meet after this year.) The content of Sam’s remarks are not known.

Desirous to the point of being desperate, the young Canadian handicapped writer Bruce W. Munro wrote “just once more” to Sam:

I hardly expected that you would wade through my book — that would be asking too much. But can you not do me the kindness to say that my book would prove interesting to those who care for that sort of literature — or something to that effect. A word of praise from you would help me wonderfully just now. Your reputation is too impregnably established here to be jeopardized by the mere act of indorsing a hundred such books as mine. …

      I am very much pleased with your letter, although there are but few crumbs of comfort in it for me.

Munro added a PS citing Luke 18:5 as a “precident” for his persistence (KJV: “Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.”) He then asked if he was not “harder to shake off than two or three widows of Bible times?” and that having been a book agent he knew something of human nature [MTP].