March 4 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder about the up-coming Washington hearings on international copyright legislation, and on the authors reception given by President Cleveland on Mar. 19. Sam wanted to take Livy but Mother Nature would intervene.
March 3 Saturday – Charles J. Langdon wrote to Sam: “At last the man Jackway has paid the mortgage for which you signed satisfaction some time ago.” Enclosed a draft for $2,090.33. Katy Leary’s sister died on Mar. 2; Katy arrived this morning [MTP]. Note: this was the mortgage Livy held on an Elmira property.
March 1 Thursday – Orion Clemens wrote to Sam thanking for his monthly $155 check. He was “anxious to hear about the machine.” Ma was having more delusions — now about Aunt Patsy Quarles who had been dead “30 or 40 years” [MTP].
March – About this month, Sam wrote a one-sentence letter to Stilson Hutchins (1838-1912), best known as the founder of the Washington Post, introducing:
Paige and Davis, who desire to see the type-setter at work, per my conversation with you [MTP] Note: possibly the typesetter then in evaluation at the Post.
Kinsmen Club sent Sam their printed rules adopted by the English section and Am. section [MTP].
February 27 Monday – Sam gave a reading at the Hartford Public High School, probably for the Rev. Leopold Simonson’s class. The content of Sam’s reading or remarks is not known [MTNJ 3: 377].
February 26 Sunday – Henry Edwards wrote from “The Lambs” in N.Y. to thank Sam for his note and for its frankness. Edwards understood “thoroughly”; that Sam had good reason for what he did. [MTP].
February 25 Saturday – Orion Clemens wrote to Sam that he’d finished the research for Wm. II (for the memory game). He’d sent cousin Eleanor Lampton five dollars. Ma was “so restless” that he “concluded to take her to every kind of show that comes….Ma frequently sees the apparitions of the friends of her youth, and she longs to behold again the house of Aunt Ann, and to reside once more in Columbia” [MTP].
February 24 Friday – John Brusnahan of the N.Y. Herald wrote to Sam that he’d received his letter of Feb. 23 and “read with great satisfaction. It is a pleasure to feel that the end is near at hand at last.” He also reported he had not been allowed to examine the Tribune machines (Mergenthalers), so concluded they would “not stand much scrutiny” [MTP].
February 23 Thursday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Henry Edwards (Harry), actor. Sam’s note was a response to some invitation (lost) by Edwards to join a “movement.” Sam expressed the difficulty of declining.
This is a singularly difficult letter to write, brief as it is. It — no, it is impossible to word it just right — that is, have in it no ungracious suggestion, but make it wholly odorless in that regard [MTP].
February 22 Wednesday – Mrs. B.F. Colburn wrote from Norwood, Mass. Asking Sam for a sketch of his life to use for the Ladies of the Universalist Church. “No,” Sam wrote on the envelope [MTP].