1 The letter Clemens answered—Howells’s reply to his two letters of 24 October—is not known to survive. Howells’s boyhood experiences on the Ohio River steamboats piloted by his uncles doubtless had primed him to accept Clemens’s proposed piloting articles (20 Feb 75 to Howells, n. 1). In a letter of 7 November 1874 to Melancthon M. Hurd, one of the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, Howells explained the acceptance in practical terms:

The failed negotiation with Harte evidently was to extend the 1871–72 contract by which he received $10,000 to write a dozen stories for journals then published by James R. Osgood, among them the Atlantic Monthly (see L5, 9 n. 3). Clemens’s “wonderfully good” piece was “A True Story” (SLC 1874). Howells’s hope that the piloting series would increase circulation was not realized: see 6 Jan 75 to Houghton and Company, n. 1.

2 If Clemens began work on “Old Times on the Mississippi” on 30 October, he soon interrupted himself. On 1 November, the New York Herald, a morning newspaper, reported, “Mr. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), of Hartford, is residing at the New York Hotel” (“Personal Intelligence,” 10). Clemens presumably had arrived the preceding day. His business in New York has not been determined, but was brief: he was back in Hartford by 3 November. He did not submit the first installment of “Old Times” until the third week of the month (see 20 Nov 74 to Howells [2nd]).

3 See 24 Oct 74 to Howells (1st), n. 1.