January 27 Thursday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, still unable to come down for a quick visit on Saturday, but he was “getting the better” of his “literary misery.” Howells reported praise of Sam’s article in the Feb. Atlantic, “Literary Nightmare” :

January 26 Wednesday – M.M.B. wrote to Sam, clippings enclosed: “A friend sends me the inclosed slip-cut from ‘The Tennessean Observer,’ published at Fernandina, Florida. I thought you could appreciate it is an illustration that truth is stranger than fiction” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “ ‘Tenneseean’ Journalism”

January 25 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood, again about the legal matter of watching William Gill, who had made a habit of plagiarizing and exploiting authors. Sam’s intention was to sue Gill for trademark infringement for using the name “Mark Twain,” a rather novel legal strategy at that time.

January 24 Monday – Sam read his newly drafted story, “Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” to the Monday Evening Club at his home. This was his third presentation to the club [Monday Evening Club] Twichell remembered the story as “serious in its intent though vastly funny and splendidly, brilliantly read.” The tale was a surreal and dark treatment that questioned the origin and function of the conscience.

January 22 Saturday – Sam’s article “A Literary Nightmare”  ran in the Hartford Courant on page one:

Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following verses, and see if he can discover anything harmful in them? [Courant.com]. (See Jan? entry for verse)

January 21 Friday – Orion Clemens wrote to Sam.

Keokuk, January 21, 1876.

My Dear Brother:—

      Are you willing to lend me five hundred dollars a year for two years, while I try to get into the practice of law?

Your Brother,

Orion.

P. S. I can succeed [MTPO].

January 20 Thursday – Clemens wrote from Hartford to an unidentified person:

January 19 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Jerome B. Stillson, former correspondent for the New York World, who had written from Denver, where he was now in the real estate business, asking Sam for an autograph. In 1877 Stillson would move back to New York and join the staff of the New York Herald, where he stayed until his death in 1880 [MTLE 1: 14].

January 18 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, answering his Jan. 16 letter:

Thanks, & ever so many, for the good opinion on Tom Sawyer. Williams has made about 200 rattling pictures for it—some of them very dainty. Poor devil, what a genius he has, & how he does murder it with rum. He takes a book of mine, & without suggestion from anybody builds no end of pictures just from his reading of it.

January 17 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood. He wanted a piece of William F. Gill’s hide this time, and told Osgood to pay the lawyers and go after him in court. Sam would go it alone if he had to, and wanted from Gill at least: