December 28 Tuesday – Fidelia Bridges sent a receipt for $220 paid for watercolors [MTP].

December 29 or 30 Thursday – Sam wrote a “Religious conundrum suggested by my present disease” to Twichell: “Question: If a Congress of Presbyterians is a PRESBYtery, what is a Congress of dissenters? Answer: A Dysentery” [MTL 6: 606].

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].

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].

[Continue of to 1876]

The Nation’s Centennial Year
1601 – Started on Huck Finn – Ah Sin & Bret Harte – West Point – Tom Sawyer Praised Skeleton
Stories – Conway as Agent – John Marshall & Henry Disinterred – Sam on Stage Centennial in Philly
– Advice to American Publishing Co. – Hayes & Torchlight Parades Political Speeches – Tauchnitz –
Belford Pirates – Readings in New England
Jabberwock Auctioneer – Crazy Isabella

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].

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 13 Thursday – Miss C.C. Ranstead for the New York Infant Asylum wrote to ask Sam for a testimonial for Maria McLaughlin who had been a wet-nurse for one of the Clemens children. “She represents herself as a deserted wife and is here waiting for her confinement. / A paper of fine-cut tobacco was found in her pocket and a bottle of liquor in [word torn away].

January 16 Sunday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, sorry to hear he’d been sick. He declined an invitation from Sam for him and the wife to visit; Howells had company coming and was behind the eight ball on finishing “Private Theatricals,” a serialized article for the Atlantic. He added:

“I’m glad to hear that the Sketches have done so well. Get Bliss to hurry out Tom Sawyer. That boy is going to make a prodigious hit” [MTHL 1: 121].

January 17 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood. He wanted a piece of William F. Gill’s hide this time, and told Osgood to pay the lawyers and go after him in court. Sam would go it alone if he had to, and wanted from Gill at least:

January 18 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, answering his Jan. 16 letter:

Thanks, & ever so many, for the good opinion on Tom Sawyer. Williams has made about 200 rattling pictures for it—some of them very dainty. Poor devil, what a genius he has, & how he does murder it with rum. He takes a book of mine, & without suggestion from anybody builds no end of pictures just from his reading of it.

January 19 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Jerome B. Stillson, former correspondent for the New York World, who had written from Denver, where he was now in the real estate business, asking Sam for an autograph. In 1877 Stillson would move back to New York and join the staff of the New York Herald, where he stayed until his death in 1880 [MTLE 1: 14].

January 20 Thursday – Clemens wrote from Hartford to an unidentified person:

January 21 Friday – Orion Clemens wrote to Sam.

Keokuk, January 21, 1876.

My Dear Brother:—

      Are you willing to lend me five hundred dollars a year for two years, while I try to get into the practice of law?

Your Brother,

Orion.

P. S. I can succeed [MTPO].

January 22 Saturday – Sam’s article “A Literary Nightmare”  ran in the Hartford Courant on page one:

Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following verses, and see if he can discover anything harmful in them? [Courant.com]. (See Jan? entry for verse)

January 24 Monday – Sam read his newly drafted story, “Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” to the Monday Evening Club at his home. This was his third presentation to the club [Monday Evening Club] Twichell remembered the story as “serious in its intent though vastly funny and splendidly, brilliantly read.” The tale was a surreal and dark treatment that questioned the origin and function of the conscience.

January 25 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to James R. Osgood, again about the legal matter of watching William Gill, who had made a habit of plagiarizing and exploiting authors. Sam’s intention was to sue Gill for trademark infringement for using the name “Mark Twain,” a rather novel legal strategy at that time.

January 26 Wednesday – M.M.B. wrote to Sam, clippings enclosed: “A friend sends me the inclosed slip-cut from ‘The Tennessean Observer,’ published at Fernandina, Florida. I thought you could appreciate it is an illustration that truth is stranger than fiction” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “ ‘Tenneseean’ Journalism”

January 27 Thursday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, still unable to come down for a quick visit on Saturday, but he was “getting the better” of his “literary misery.” Howells reported praise of Sam’s article in the Feb. Atlantic, “Literary Nightmare” :