January 23 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to John D. Adams of the Century Co. enclosing a “few alterations” to a JA excerpt and asking for proofs of the rest of the parts; he hadn’t thought it necessary but admitted that was a mistake and was glad that Henry M. Alden “had that inspiration” [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Bachellor & Johnson Syndicate, explaining his failure to write a short story for their recent $1,000 offer. Instead he offered a longer story, the 27 or 28,000 word Tom Sawyer, Detective — as Told by Huck Finn, written this month.

Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers about writing a story for the Batchellor Syndicate, and then offering them Tom Sawyer, Detective. He thought that John Brisben Walker of the Cosmopolitan might want it if Irving Batchelor turned it down, and if both offers were insufficient he’d pass it by the Century Co. or Harper’s.

I’ll have it all type-written here & corrected for the press; then I will ship it to you & ask Miss Harrison to hive it in the safe, till I hear from Bacheller (& also Walker of the Cosmopolitan). … Do you think Harry would read the story when it comes & pledge himself to a favorable verdict? Usual terms for billiard-marking.

I hope our Chicago machine shop will prosper. It won’t take much of a dividend from it to piece out this family’s income sufficiently to disappoint the wolf [MTHHR 122-3].

Note: Harry Rogers was H.H.’s fifteen year old son. The Chicago failure of the Paige typesetter left Rogers and Clemens involved in a machine shop there (as reflected in Sam’s May 26, 1895 to Orion, the shop was involved in making typewriters). Sam also noted that W.D. Howells currently had his story, A Parting and a Meeting, running serially in Cosmopolitan from Dec. 1894 to Feb. 1895.