October 8 Thursday – Clemens wrote To William Dean Howells, the letter unrecovered but an enclosure about The Olympic Theatre survives and may be read at [Mtl 6: 627-30].

October 7 Wednesday – Sam’s neighbor and to-be literary collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner and family, left for a year abroad. Twichell notes in his diary the date and that “A.C.O & Mary D. went with them” [Yale, copy at MTP]. Parties are unidentified.

Owen S. McKinney wrote to Sam asking about a woman whom Clemens called “a fraud”:

October 5 Monday – From Twichell’s diaries:

“Reached home after vacation and a trip of 7 weeks to Peru and the W. Coast of South America (with Yung Wing) M.T. met me at the depot” [Yale, copy at MTP].

October 3 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to William Dean Howells about possible submissions for the Atlantic. Howells had written seeking “some such story as that colored one” for the January issue. Sam replied:

“…the house is still full of carpenters. So we’ll give it up. These carpenters are here for time & eternity; I am satisfied of that. I kill them when I get opportunities, but the builder goes & gets more.”

October – Sam inscribed a copy of John Campbell’s (1779-1861) Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal (1874) [Gribben 126].

September 30 Wednesday – William Dean Howells wrote from Cambridge, Mass. Sam asking for “some such as that colored” story “for our Jan’y number.” He congratulated Sam on President Grant’s enjoyment of the Col. Sellers character in the Gilded Age play; and said they’d enjoyed Charles & Susan Warner’s visit before they left for Europe [MTHL 1: 32].

September 29 Tuesday – In Hartford, Sam wrote to Frank Fuller, who evidently had written trying to engage Sam in a stage production. Sam replied:

My Dear Frank:

Many thanks for your letter & enclosures. If I had the time I would hurl myself in the drama, wholesale. But I must go on with my book. I do not know whether I could fit Mr. & Mrs. Barney Williams with characters or not, but I still think I could fit Bijou—though I must not be thinking about dramas, with this big book on my shoulders.

September 28 Monday – President Grant attended a performance of the Gilded Age play at the Park Theatre in New York.

September 26 Saturday – John E. Owens wrote from Boston to ask for production rights to a play in New Orleans for GA [MTP].

September 25 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to William Seaver, answering his note of Sept. 17.

“I knew you’d be glad the play was commended, & I hope that before this you & John Hay have been there & wept….Remember that darkey yarn I told you & Hay? Well, it has gone to the “Atlantic” & so you boys can’t gobble it, you see” [MTL 6: 245-6].

On or about this day Sam also wrote to James Redpath: