Mr. C. T. Parsloe, the talented young actor who, in the small part of the Chinaman Hop Sing, in the “Two Men of Sandy Bar,” made the only artistic success of the play, has been approached lately by several dramatists who are anxious to develop the idea of the Chinese character into the leading and important feature of a new drama to be “written expressly for” him. (“Amusements,” 5)

He came to Hartford and remained with us two weeks. He was a man who could never persuade himself to do a stroke of work until his credit was gone, and all his money, and the wolf was at his door; then he could sit down and work harder—until temporary relief was secured—than any man I have ever seen. . . . The next morning after his arrival we went to the billiard-room and began work upon the play. I named my characters and described them; Harte did the same by his. Then he began to sketch the scenario, act by act, and scene by scene. He worked rapidly, and seemed to be troubled by no hesitations or indecisions; what he accomplished in an hour or two would have cost me several weeks of painful and difficult labor, and would have been valueless when I got through. But Harte’s work was good, and usable; to me it was a wonderful performance.

Then the filling-in began. Harte set down the dialogue swiftly, and I had nothing to do except when one of my characters was to say something; then Harte told me the nature of the remark that was required, I furnished the language, and he jotted it down. After this fashion, we worked two or three or four hours every day for a couple of weeks, and produced a comedy that was good and would act. His part of it was the best part of it.

On the 7th of November, 1876—I think it was the 7th—he suddenly appeared at my house in Hartford and remained there during the following day—election day. As usual, he was tranquil; he was serene; doubtless the only serene and tranquil voter in the United States; the rest—as usual in our country—were excited away up to the election limit, for that vast political conflagration was blazing at white heat which was presently to end in one of the Republican party’s most cold-blooded swindles of the American people—the stealing of the presidential chair from Mr. Tilden, who had been elected, and the conferring of it upon Mr. Hayes, who had been defeated. . . . I was as excited and inflamed as was the rest of the voting world, and I was surprised when Harte said he was going to remain with us until the day after the election; but not much surprised, for he was such a careless creature that I thought it just possible that he had gotten his dates mixed. There was plenty of time for him to correct his mistake, and I suggested that he go back to New York and not lose his vote. But he said he was not caring about his vote; that he had come away purposely, in order that he might avoid voting and yet have a good excuse to answer the critics with. Then he told me why he did not wish to vote. He said that through influential friends he had secured the promise of a consulate from Mr. Tilden and the same promise from Mr. Hayes; that he was going to be taken care of no matter how the contest might go, and that his interest in the election began and ended there. He said he could not afford to vote for either of the candidates, because the other candidate might find it out and consider himself privileged to cancel his pledge. (SLC 1907, in MTE , 275, 277–78, 286–88)

[In this place the editors propose to avail themselves of such passages of their correspondence as have a public interest, hoping in this desultory fashion to secure some notable part of that opinion of events, manners, and letters which otherwise goes unuttered in print. They invite all writers who have minds upon any ethical or æsthetic subject briefly to free them here, and while they will not wittingly suffer a personal spite to be wreaked, they will especially welcome the expression of intellectual grudges of every sort. In like manner whoever has a strong predilection worthy the reader’s consideration shall have the right to make it known under this head. New facts of literary or artistic value will also be very acceptable.] (Atlantic Monthly 39 [Jan 77]: 100)

—Miss Anna Dickinson, I see, again braves her fate with the public on the stage. I do not know how much she may have improved in the theatrical art since I saw her in Boston last winter, but the critics, who have constantly been kinder to her than her own ambition has been, do not yet raise the voice of acclaim. On her first appearance I found the spectacle of her failure so cruel that it was impossible to look at it steadily. And yet, after I came away, I perceived the justice of what had happened. Here was a lady, with all the good motives in the world, aiming to place herself at the very top in an untried art, over the heads of people who had given years or lives of hard work to it. If she had succeeded, it would have been an injustice more cruel than her failure was. But it was not in nature, it was not in the justice which orders these things, that she should succeed. Genius itself succeeds only by arduous self-training; and it is not for the beginner in any art to snatch its honors from its devoted students. On the whole, I consoled myself for Miss Dickinson’s defeat. It was not peculiarly arrogant in her to attempt the highest prize of the theatrical art; that is what débutantes of mature years nearly always do; but the thing is arrogant in itself. If Miss Dickinson had gone humbly to some accomplished actor, and begged to know in what subordinate walk of the profession she might hope, with anxious and assiduous study, to succeed, and she had tried that and failed, I should have felt sorry for her. But I bear her present defeat with fortitude; and I count it gain whenever this people, in whatever way, gets a knockdown hint to the effect that to do a thing you must learn how; and that to play on the fiddle it is not merely necessary to take a bow and fiddle with it. (SLC 1877)

You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that nobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would be nothing to reflect my uncle’s echo. . . .

It was finally decided that the echo was property; that the hills were property; that the two men were separate and independent owners of the two hills, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was at full liberty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, but must give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which might result to my uncle’s half of the echo. This decision also debarred my uncle from using defendant’s hill to reflect his part of the echo, without defendant’s consent; he must use only his own hill; if his part of the echo would not go, under these circumstances, it was sad, of course, but the court could find no remedy. The court also debarred defendant from using my uncle’s hill to reflect his end of the echo, without consent. (SLC 1876, 675)