March 14 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook:

Murray Hill Hotel, New York., March 14, ’88. I came down here from Hartford, Saturday the 10th, — to dinner to Henry Irving at Charles A. Dana’s Sunday evening, & the memorable blizzard has snow-bound me here ever since. Not a train here from Hartford since early Monday morning. Mrs. Clemens was to come down to-day, & we were going to Washington to-morrow. Of course she will not come till everything is smoothe again. I can’t get a telegram nor a telephone to her nor she a message to me. A Boston friend is better off: he cabled Boston through London, & got an answer back promptly over the same long road [MTNJ 3:379].

Just under the above notebook entry while snowbound, Sam listed several authors, some with opinions of their prose styles or characters/stories that exemplified a particular style:

R.M. Johnson, Uncle Remus, Cable, Howells, Clarence King, (Harte, artificial) Stowe (Sam Lawson) Grant (simple) Hardy, (Haggard, hideous) Stephenson (Kidnapped), Uncle Tom (earlier, & dialect bad) / Howells (truth). / Pilgrim’s Prog. Scott. Defoe (tone) / Derby (Doesticks) [379].

Henry W. Cleveland wrote from Louisville, Ky. to Sam: “I have before me a letter of Ex.President Jefferson Davis, of the 10th, in which he mentions a letter of your’s, objecting to joint authorship. There is no objection to be made on that line, as it is not contemplated” [MTP].