March 27 Saturday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Charles Webster about complaints against the Hartford canvasser of his books who lived in Thompsonville — “canvassing invisible.” And about Frederick Grant:

I don’t quite know what kind of an offer I can make…but I am keeping the thing in my slow mind, & when it crystallized I will report [MTP].

March 26 Friday – In New York, Sam wrote on Webster & Co. Letterhead to Mrs. Henry G. Allen. [MTP: Paraphrased from Charles Hamilton catalogs, Jan. 21, 1982, No. 143 Item 54].

The outside of your kind letter had such a business-like aspect that I handed it (without opening it) to a clerk to be answered. But there are some things which even the ablest clerk can’t do & this turned out to be one of them…”[MTP]

March 25 Thursday – Sam continued his business stop in New York City.

A typesetting tournament began in Philadelphia on Mar. 16. Sam made an entry in his notebook on this day’s results for Joseph McCann of the New York Herald, and William C. Barnes of the New York World [MTNJ 3: 223]. See Mar. 27 entry for results.

March 24 Wednesday – At the Normandie Hotel in New York, Sam met in the morning with Charles Webster; later with Jesse Grant who was negotiating to gain part ownership in Webster & Co. [Mar. 19 to Webster].

March 23 Tuesday – Sam went New York for a meeting Charles Webster and Jesse Grant at the Normandie Hotel the next morning [Mar. 19 to Webster, MTP; N.Y. Times, Mar. 24 p.2 “Personal Intelligence”]. Other business and/or pleasure was on his docket, as he spent three days in the City. This trip may be the occasion which Susy referred to in her unfinished biography of her father.

March 22 Monday – Sam presented a paper titled “Knights of Labor — The New Dynasty” to the Monday Evening Club. This was Sam’s tenth presentation to the Club since his election in 1873 [Monday Evening Club]. See Budd, Collected p.883-90. Also listed in Camfield, isterin. It wasn’t published until 1957, edited by Bernard DeVoto, in the New England Quarterly, XXX p.383-88.

March 21 Sunday – From Susy Clemens’ diary:

Sunday — Here is another of papa’s stories told to me by Jean:

“The Generous Fender”

March 20 Saturday – Charles Webster wrote to Sam, firmly against allowing a reduced share of Webster & Co. To allow Jesse Grant into the firm:

I would go very slow about taking in new partners. I don’t want to part with any of my interest but if you wish to sell any of yours I have no objection to the Grant boys, but they should have nothing to say about the conduct of the business [MTNJ 3: 220n111].

March 19 Friday – Susy Clemens’ fourteenth birthday. From Susy Clemens’ diary entry of Mar. 23:

The other day was my birthday, and I had a little birthday parting in the evening and papa acted some very funny Charades, with Mr. Gherhardt, Mr. Jesse Grant (who had come up from New York and was spending the evening with us), — and Mr. Frank Warner. — One of them was “on his knees” honys-sneeze.

There were a good many other funny ones, all, of which I don’t remember.

March 17 Wednesday – In Washington, D.C., William Dean Howells wrote to Sam. The Howells family was there for Winny Howells’ health. He enclosed a newspaper clipping, now lost, “presumably about a revivalist preacher” [MTHL 2: 551n1].

Here is a man in this paper letting himself loose on the neighbors in a way that I thought you’d like to see. Please keep it for me.