January 8 Sunday – Back in Hartford Sam wrote to Andrew Chatto, and informed him of the progress of Library of Humor, after discovering that Chatto had answered him about interest in the book. Chatto had sent a reply to Webster & Co. Sam declined to take up some offer from a “Mr. Christmas,” which may have had something to do with the recent English tax assessment (“…some day we’ll measure our strength with the Imperial Government & see what comes of it.”) Sam added that he planned to be back in New York “6 days hence” (Jan. 14) and that he’d follow up on Webster & Co.’s handling of the Library of Humor simultane.

Sam also wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore asking him to be at the house before his Browning Club met on Wednesday a.m. (Jan. 11) with the Webster & Co. Contract. He also wrote crosswise on the end of the letter and asked if Whitmore had received the “Century” check he’d mailed from New York.

I guess there is a new complication [MTP].

An entry in Sam’s notebook “Go to some publisher & get the facts,” together with the footnote 3: 362n201, explain that Sam wrote three unpublished articles refuting Brander Matthews’ position on international copyright. From one of these articles, a surviving last MS page was auctioned on Nov. 28, 2007. This fragment was double signed by Sam and Mark Twain and dated Hartford, Jan. 8, 1888. It reads:

…they are always “previously published in England” & I do wonder if the gentle tribe of magazine publishers do really go to Canada every month and root around there a day or two in order to make sure that [line]

Sam then drew a line across the page and wrote,

Drop all this out of the article — also page 15; these points are not involved in the dispute. SLC [www.liveauctioneers.com/item/4584242 ; Nov. 28, 2007].

George M. Young wrote from Boston to Sam, who wrote on the envelope “From a damned stranger.” Young wrote he’d been at the Tremont Temple when Sam introduced Henry M. Stanley. [MTP].