January 12 Wednesday – Moncure Conway wrote a postcard from Concord, Mass: “Thanks!! / I shall arrive in Hartford by train leaving New York at 10 a.m. on the 18th & come straight / M.D. Conway” [MTP].
January 11 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Frank Bliss on an accounting of monies owed, including his debt of a loan to Charles Dudley Warner [MTLE 1: 34]. Note: See list of those who had received books from Sam in the notes online for this letter at MTPO.
January 9 Sunday – William Wright (Dan De Quille) wrote to Sam. In part:
Dear Mark.— I am utterly in the dark in regard to what is being done in Hartford. I wrote to Mr Bliss last Sunday and requested him to let me know how he is getting on. I sent him three prefaces, but don’t know that any one among them is worth a cent. However, he may be able to make one out of the three. I have also thought it might be well enough to have a dedication in it, so inclose one [MTP].
January 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Francis D. Clark, secretary for the Associated Pioneers of the Territorial Days of California, to decline an invitation to their first annual meeting and banquet.
January 4 Tuesday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, thanking him for a copy of the Jumping Frog book sent after not hearing from Sam for awhile. “The more I think over your boy-book [The Adventures of Tom Sawyer] the more I like it.” Was it true that Sam was going to Europe in the spring? [MTHL 1: 118].
Moncure Conway wrote a postcard to ask Sam if he’d express Conway’s overshoes to Boston [MTP].
January 2 Sunday – In New York, Bret Harte wrote to Sam about the dramatization of Gabriel Conroy. John T. Raymond had not agreed to Harte’s terms for the play, and another actor had pocketed Harte’s first play without performing it:
January 1 Saturday – in Hartford Sam wrote a postcard to William Dean Howells, asking to write a few articles for the Atlantic in a “new & popular low-comedy vein”—and Sam wrote “scofulous humor” inside of a box [MTLE 1: 28]. Sam’s postcard suggestion for “scrofulous humor” and a pasting of a newspaper clipping is revealed by the following ad, which is typical of many that ran for this product in the Hartford Courant (27 times in 1875) and other papers. use of a standard advertising phrase with double meaning, using the old physiology definition of “humor.”
January – Possibly this month Sam wrote from Hartford to Isaac H. Bromley, who had originated the popular expression, “Punch, brothers! Punch with care!” To Sam’s consternation, the line was often attributed to him. He advised Bromley,
“The next time you write anything like that for God’s sake sign your name to it…” [MTLE 1: 27].
December 31 Friday – Moncure Conway ended his visit with Sam and left for New York, where he was to deliver another lecture [MTL 6: 600-1].
December 30 Thursday – Sam wrote in a gift copy of Sketches, New and Old, for Moncure Conway:
To Friend Conway: / Who will kindly remember that the billiard-odds lay with him, & Victory with his gratified friend & servant, Mark Twain. Hartford, New Year’s 1876 [MTL 6: 607].