March 1 Saturday – Charles Webster wrote to Sam: bulk of letter is about play negotiations with Marshall Mallory, etc. “Your idea about the three books is certainly good. I will write in a day or two about that” [MTP].
March – Sam inscribed a copy of Edgar Watson Howe’s The Story of a Country Town (1883): “S.L. Clemens, Hartford, March 1884, Sent by the Author” [Gribben 326].
February 29 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster with ideas to discount subscription sales if a buyer bought two or more different books [MTBus 239-40]. He’d been writing “original matter” for L. Prang & Co, a big calendar and Christmas card publisher that used color to spur sales. Sam’s arrangement was to receive ten cents for each dollar calendar sold. Simple, yet Sam saw a loophole that might yield him more:
February 28 Thursday – Sam wrote to Ainsworth R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress, enclosing $1 fee and asking that the synopsis of his play for “The Prince & Pauper, a romance in 4 Acts” be copyrighted [MTP].
February 27 Wednesday – Augustin Daly turned down Sam’s dramatization of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Daly wrote “I fear that Tom Sawyer would not make a success at my theatre.” He disagreed with Sam that grown ups could play the part of children [MTP]. Webster claims that Sam “seems to have dropped playwrighting at this point” [236-7].
February 26 Tuesday – Howells responded to Sam’s letter of Feb. 18 that he was “down in the dust at the notion” that he’d made Sam “take a journey to New York and back for nothing….” Sam answered:
“Ah, what the reader puts into a letter, that is what said reader finds in it! There couldn’t have been any irascibility in my letter, for the reason that there wasn’t any in me” [MTHL 2: 476].
February 25 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Josiah H. Gilbert, permitting use of up to 600 words from his “Babies” speech [MTP]. Note: Gilbert may have been the editor of Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers (1904).
February 24 Sunday – Karl Gerhardt wrote to Sam and Livy; their baby Olive was better after someone volunteered to pay for a nurse and going out of the city to find good air; he gave a sheet of expenses [MTP].
February 23 Saturday – Kingsland Smith, of St. Paul Roller Mill Co. wrote to Sam that he’d been forced to postpone his visit; he’d rec’d Sam’s “kind note” of Jan. 15; they’d agented their flour in Hartford and sold a car load of it; it was 18 below zero there [MTP]. Note: Sam’s of Jan. 15 not extant.
February 22 Friday – Sam and party moved from Brooklyn to New York. From Twichell’s journal:
“Friday, after a charming morning in Brooklyn (M.T. sang Negro ‘spirituals’ at the piano, deliciously) we went to N.Y. and put up at the Gilsey House” [Yale, copy at MTP].