October 9 Tuesday – Charles Webster wrote about a personal matter—a desk for Livy [MTP].

October 8 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to the Miller & Bingham & Elder Manufacturing Co.

“I will explain that the shirt I wear is not a patented article, but I invented it myself, for the public benefit of lazy men. It & its collar open in the back, & the collar & the cuffs are not detachable. No buttons anywhere about it except a couple at the back of the neck. This saves much profanity” [MTP].

October 6 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster, reminding him to send the $80 secretary for Livy’s coming birthday [MTBus 222].

Sam wrote and signed a check to Fox & Co. for $121.47 [Heritage Bookshop Catalogue 130, p. 90 item 458].

Worden & Co. Wrote receipt of Sam’s $2,350 of Oct. 5 to the margin call [MTP].

October 4 Thursday – Sam, in Hartford, wrote congratulations to A.V.S. Anthony, Osgood’s design manager, whose daughter was getting married. Sam sent his regrets at being unable to attend the ceremony [MTP].

October 3 or 4 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster, sending new ideas to add to the history game and instructions for a new board—two boards with felt in between [MTBus 222].

October 1 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Edward House. He complained that Twichell’s publication of his letter:

“…broke up some quite extensive plans of mine, & squandered & rendered useless the material out of which I had meant to build an illustrated small book—but that was the smallest part of the plan which he ruined” [MTHL 1: 440n4].

October – “American Literary Portraits / Mark Twain” ran in the Oct. issue of The Ideal Monthly Magazine, p.8-10. Not everyone was enamored of Sam:

“To him there is nothing sacred….At times he is so coarse he is not fit for polite society…has nothing, absolutely nothing, to redeem his coarseness, his irreverence, his want of refinement” [Tenney, MTJ, Spring 2004 p4].

September 30 Sunday – In Boston, ready to travel to Virginia to see his father, W.D. Howells wrote a short note to Sam, advising he wouldn’t be able to stop in Hartford on the way down, but hoped to stop on the way home [MTHL 1: 443].

September 29 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster, directing him to “get that play out of your safe—‘Colonel Sellers as a Scientist’—& express it to me” [MTHL 1: 444]. Sam was now ready to respond to the Mallory brothers’ interest in the play.

September 28 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Orion. Sam had hired his brother to supply lists of dates for English kings for the memory board game.

My Dear Bro – Kings rec’d. Quite satisfactory. Send balance soon as you can.

O, yes!—go right along with the former labor the minute you get the skeletons done—but don’t print till I say.

The news from Ma is first rate. All well here & send love. Sam [MTP].