February 1 Saturday – Sam went to New York City and would return Feb. 3. Clara Clemens also went for an appointment with her orthodontist. Miss Lilly Gillette Foote, the Clemens’ governess accompanied them [Livy to her mother, Feb.2, MTP].

Sam’s notebook:

February – Harper’s Magazine, Number 477, p.439-44 included Sam’s story, “A Majestic Literary Fossil,” which was collected in 1893’s The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories.

St. Nicholas magazine for children, p.309-13 ran “A Wonderful Pair of Slippers,” which included Sam’s letter to Elsie Leslie.

January 31 Friday – In Hartford Sam answered Howells’ Jan. 28 letter. Since Howells’ visit, Sam had received Burbank’s Jan. 27 inquiry about playing Hank Morgan.

This seems to arrive opportunely. Return it to me & I will send it to Howard Taylor & suggest that he might do worse than put the “Yankee” drama into Burbank’s hands.

January 30 Thursday – Sam wrote on a card to an unidentified person:

If I had ever made such a resolution I would break it now. Yours truly Mark Twain. Jan. 30/90 [MTP].

Daniel Whitford wrote to Sam that the gross receipts of P&P for the week beginning Jan. 20 were $5,433.25 and he enclosed a check for Sam’s portion with statement (not extant). Whitford had called on Frohman to again discuss foreign rights to the play — no agreement was reached [MTP].

January 29 Wednesday – Mary Greening, cousin of Sam’s, wrote from Hunnewell, Mo. asking why she never got answers to her letters . “Why don’t your children write?” [MTP].

January 28 Tuesday – Howells, back in Boston, wrote to Sam regarding the play, The American Claimant (which had been Colonel Sellers as Scientist and licensed to Alfred P. Burbank in 1886).

January 27 Monday – The New York Times, p.5, ran a long article on Edward House’s lawsuit, “MARK TWAIN HAULED UP,” which cited from Sam’s Dec. 17 & 26, 1886 letters to House about dramatizing P&P. Also quoted were affidavits in the suit, and House’s Aug. 29, 1887 letter to Sam. There is little doubt as to the sentiments of the Times (see Whitford’s reason for a Times grudge, Jan. 31):

January 26 Sunday – In the evening William Dean Howells left the Clemenses and Hartford, catching the train “just as it began to move” [MTHL 2: 628]. Howells wrote his father on Feb. 2, apologizing for failing to write “last Sunday,” this day: “I had been at New York, and I stopped to see Mark Twain at Hartford and we talked much all day” [MTP: Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, p.1 Doubleday, 1928].

January 25 Saturday – After his Jan. 23 dinner at the Union League Club, William Dean Howells stopped off at Hartford, probably staying the night. He wrote to Sam of the visit and his departure on Jan. 28 and also on Feb. 2 to his father [MTHL 2: 628&n4].

The Critic reviewed the stage version of P&P.

January 24 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote a two-line decline to Clarence W. Bowen:

My hand is out, on miscellaneous work, from lack of practice, & so it would not be worth while to try [MTP].