December 13 Thursday – Sam wrote 2,100 words on JA, Book III [Dec. 16 to Rogers]. A review of PW by the London Chronicle, p.3:

There is in this volume a good deal of Mark Twain at his best, and not a little of Mark Twain at his worst. The story is one of the strangest compounds of strength and artificiality we have read for many a day. Pathos and bathos, humour and twaddle, are thrown together in a way that is nothing less than amazing [Budd, Contemporary Reviews 360].