Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):

The “colored one” was “A True Story,” proofs of which Clemens had returned sometime after 20 September (20 Sept 74 to Howells, n. 1click to open link). Grant attended the 28 September performance of the Gilded Age play. According to the New York Evening Post: “President Grant was one of the audience at the Park Theatre last evening, and joined heartily in the applause and laughter which are the invariable accompaniments of the acting of Mr. Raymond as Colonel Sellers. The President, after the performance, personally congratulated the actor on his success” (“The Park Theatre,” 29 Sept 74, 2).

Garvie.

On 8 October Charles Dudley Warner and his wife, Susan, sailed from New York for Germany aboard the Kunhardt steamer Silesia, beginning an excursion to Europe and the Near East that ended with their return to Hartford on 1 July 1876. In December 1874 Warner began writing letters from Egypt as a “Special Correspondent” of the New York Times, and he corresponded for his own paper, the Hartford Courant, as well (see, for example, Warner 1875 [bib14073], 1875 [bib14074], 1875 [bib14077]). He also published seven articles in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875 and 1876, which later became chapters in his two books about the excursion: My Winter on the Nile, Among the Mummies and Moslems and In the Levant, published in 1876 and 1876–77, respectively (Warner 1875 [bib00179], 1875 [bib00180], 1876 [bib00186], 1876 [bib00181], 1876 [bib00182], 1876 [bib00183], 1876 [bib00184], 1876 [bib00185], 1876–77). The Warners were accompanied on part of their travels by Hartford friends Austin Cornelius Dunham (1833–1917) and his sister Mary. Dunham was associated with his father in Austin Dunham and Son, wool merchants. Austin C. Dunham returned to Hartford on 24 April 1875 (it is not known whether his sister returned with him). Warner dedicated My Winter on the Nile to him; he dedicated In the Levant to Howells (Twichell, 1:1, 94; Hartford Courant: “Personal,” 7 Oct 74, 3 July 76, 2; “Brief Mention,” 19 Oct 74, 12 Jan 75, 2; “Connecticut People Abroad,” 28 Nov 74, 2, 5 Dec 74, 1; “Connecticut Travelers,” 16 Dec 74, 2; “Personal,” 26 Apr 75, 2; New York Times: “Marine Intelligence,” 9 Oct 74, 8; “Mr. Charles Dudley Warner . . .,” 8 Jan 75, 4; “Nook Farm Genealogy,” 13; Andrews, 152–53; Geer 1874, 61; Burpee, 1:620).

Howells replied (CU-MARK):

Stoddard was traveling in Italy at this time, corresponding for the San Francisco Chronicle (1 Feb 75 to Stoddard, n. 7click to open link). Howells presumably wanted to pay him for one or more of his articles in the Atlantic Monthly for July, August, and November (Charles Warren Stoddard 1874 [bib14014], 1874 [bib14015], 1874 [bib14016]). Clemens may have answered Howells’s question about Stoddard in a letter not known to survive. He did not give his final answer to Howells’s story request until 24 October, in the second of two letters written that day.