June 4 Monday – Sam wrote an almost reverent letter from Hartford to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, soliciting his help to obtain the Swiss mission for Howells.

June 3 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, poet, novelist and editor who would succeed Howells as editor of the Atlantic in 1881. The Clemens family would leave for Quarry Farm on June 5 and Sam hoped to write a book there:

June – An unsigned article “An Overrated Book” ran without title in the “Contributors’ Club,” June issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Attributed to Twain, it was later titled in an index for the period. A reading online revealed the writer’s home was Ponkapog, Mass., that of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. The review was of Rev. Edward Payson Hammond’s Sketches of Palestine [Eppard 430-1]. (See entries for June 6, 1877, Oct. 27, 1879 and Jan.

May 31 Thursday – A.P. Hodgkins of Chelsea, Mass. wrote a fan letter from Rome, Italy [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “From an admirer”

May 29 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, revealing that he had traveled to Bermuda under an assumed name, and lamenting the fact that Howells had not been on the trip:

May 28 Monday – Twichell wrote of the Bermuda trip in his journal upon his return, that he’d gone “with M.T. who paid all my expenses” [Yale 174].