January 26 Friday – In Boston, Mass. Sam wrote a two-page letter to Jeanne Chalmers of that city.

I tried to read your kind note on the stage, but it looked unmannerly & I gave it up. Since then I have been filling engagements till this moment, that I have arrived in my bedroom very weary. I had to leave the theater about 4 to meet an engagement, therefore I hope you did not go to the box office. I am due in New York by the earliest train tomorrow…[MTP: Batchelder catalogs, No.18, Item 56]. Note: evidently Sam left Boston at 11 a.m. on Jan. 26, not Jan. 27; see letter to Livy on Jan. 27.

Sam wrote of this busy day to Livy the next day (Jan. 27):

…I did errands in Boston till 11 a.m.; reached N.Y. at 5.30 p.m.; left my satchel at the station & walked 17 blocks in the snowstorm to Mr. Rogers’s; arranged for a meeting with Mr. Hall & son-in-law Benjamin to settle their squabbles; received the details of Mr. Rogers’s new arrangement with the C.C. [Conn. Co.] to aid them in corraling the outstanding royalties — then he & I talked over last Wednesday night [Jan. 24]; after dinner we went down stairs & played billiards till 10.30, talking type setter now & then — and prophecying; then walked back the 17 blocks in the storm, got my satchel & caught a car for here. Here I found an accumulation of letters from all sorts of people, but none from you, alas! Went to bed & to sleep [MTP: Jan 27 to 30 to Livy].

Robert Reid the artist also wrote of Mrs. Cowdin’s gathering asking “Don’t make any engagement for to-morrow (Saturday) night. Mrs. Cowdin wants you to come there, she’s written to you. We’ll stay late & ‘tell stories’” [The Twainian, Mar-Apr 1978 p.4; MTP].

Gertrude Cheever Cowdin (Mrs. John E. Cowdin) sent a note of invitation for Sam to come to an “impromptu spree” on Saturday (Jan. 27) about ten thirty. She announced Robert Reid would be there Sam sent this and other invitations to Livy and wrote on the back of this one, “I send these because you need something to read,dearheart [MTP].