February 2 and 4 Sunday – Livy and Sam wrote from Hartford to Olivia Lewis Langdon, who sent them a set of spirits glassware and a finger bowl for their seventh wedding anniversary (Feb. 2). Livy noted that it had been eight years since her engagement to Sam.

January 26 Friday – Sam acted as auctioneer and read stories for the Mission Circle, Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford [The Hartford Daily Courant of January 25, 1877, p. 2 in an article titled “A Package Party” reported the entertainment would depend upon the auctioneer and that Mark Twain was scheduled to officiate in that capacity].

January 25 Thursday – Plock & Co. NYC wrote to Sam, sending him $125 from Bernard Tauchnitz [MTP].

January 24 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Frank Bliss, acknowledging receipt of a statement and check for $83. Sam asked for a paper that would document Bret Harte’s indebtedness, and wanted a statement for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Feb. 1. Sales of the book would be disappointing.

January 22 Monday – Sam wrote a postcard from Hartford to his attorney, Charles Perkins, asking if “that document” had been sent to “R” for his signature. If not, Sam wanted to make an important alteration. “R” may have been Routledge, in the matter of suing Belford Brothers; or John T. Raymond [MTLE 2: 9].

January 21 Sunday – Sam purchased books from the Osgood & Co., including Bayard Taylor’s The National Ode: The Memorial Freedom Poem (1877), and Centennial Ode (Author, year unidentified), and Richard Irving Dodge’s The Plains of the Great West and Their Inhabitants [Gribben 687; 134; 197].

January 19 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford per Fanny Hesse to his sister Pamela Moffett recommending St. Paul’s, a preparatory school in Concord, New Hampshire for his nephew Samuel Moffett. Sam anticipated the visit of his nephew, now seventeen [MTLE 2: 8].

January 17 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Hjalmar H. Boyesen (1848-1895), Norwegian born American writer and literary critic. Boyesen had visited the Clemens family over the holidays. Sam wrote how much they had all enjoyed the visit, extending an open invitation to return. Sam shipped Boyesen’s overshoes and some pamphlets left behind to Boyesen’s home in Ithaca, New York.

January 14 Sunday – Clemens, Twichell, Charles and Susan Warner, Dr.’s Nathaniel J. Burton and Edwin P. Parker all went to hear a lecture by Joseph Cook of Boston. Twichell didn’t think much of the presentation [Yale, copy at MTP].

January 13 Saturday – The first substantial review following the American Publishing Co.’s release of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on Dec. 8, 1876 ran in the New York Times. Unsigned and cursory, it noted:

…a truly clever child’s book is one in which both man and boy can find pleasure. No child’s book can be perfectly acceptable otherwise.