February 26 Monday – Chatto & Windus wrote [MTP]. (envelope only survives)

February 25 Sunday – Karl and Hattie J. Gerhardt wrote to Sam and Livy, the letter from Drexel with money rec’d. “Many thanks for the new letter…I shall telegraph you when the little stranger arrives….Josie has a most excellent nurse who does everything for us so that I don’t have any worry and am losing no time” [MTP].

February 22 Thursday – In Hartford, Sam typed a letter to Charles Webster. Sam’s ex-attorney, Charles Perkins, had made an offer to reorganize the Kaolatype Company, and Sam wanted Webster to investigate whether to “knock the thing in the head.” More said about the alarm system, the batteries, the quitting bells, the alarm clock. Also Sam was concerned about a subscription for the magazine The Portfolio, An Artistic Periodical, London, to J.W.

February 19 Monday – Sam read a paper titled, “What is Happiness?” to the Monday Evening Club in Hartford. This was his seventh presentation to the Club since his election in 1873 [Monday Evening Club]. An early question in his notebook: “Is anybody or any action ever unselfish? (Good theme for Club Essay)” [MTNJ 2: 498n214]. Sam would further develop his scrutiny on human motivation in What Is Man?

February 18 Sunday – In Hartford, Sam wrote a scorching letter to J.W. Bouton:

      Draw & be damned. I subscribed for your Portfolio one year & no more. I paid for it. Since then you have thrust it upon me & persecuted me with it at your own risk & in defiance of my several protests.

February 16 Friday – George MacDonald wrote from Bordighera, Italy: “I am ashamed of my delay in answering your welcome letter, and acknowledging the excellent portrait which I am very pleased to have. But it is so difficult to write letters when one can only by a strain get through the days work of writing other kinds of things.” He asked if Sam would collaborate on a book he was writing by adding “a little bit here & there” [MTP].

February 15 Thursday – Sam telegraphed from Hartford to James B. Pond informing him that George W. Cable was leaving for New York within the half-hour [MTP].

Andrew Chatto wrote but the letter is illegible. Made out one reference to publishing LM [MTP].

February 14 Wednesday – Ex-Governor Marshall Jewell’s funeral was held at 11 AM. The body was then on view at Asylum Hill Congregational Church at 2:30 PM with “public exercises.” It is likely that Sam attended one or both of these services [N.Y. Times for Feb. 13, 1883 p.2]. (See Feb. 10 entry, letter to Howells of Mar.

February 13 Tuesday – Bessie Stone wrote from Auburndale, Mass. concerned about Sam’s soul: “I expect that the Lord Jesus will knock at the door of your heart this week (Rev. 3, 20), and please let Him in” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “D— fool”; Rev. 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

February 12 Monday – “American Humorist. Mark Twain” New York: Funk & Wagnalls, by H.R. Haweis was a biography and criticism which argued that though Sam built a reputation as a humorist, he should be taken seriously; emphasized his travel writings [eBay Antique Book Central, Sept. 28, 2009, Item 400075870148]. Note: in the Sept. 1998 issue of Firsts 8.9 p.45, Mac Donnell writes: “Issued separately in wrappers and also bound in cloth by the publisher with others in the series.