No letters written between 24 and 31 May have been found. During that week, the Clemenses entertained three out-of-town guests. Joaquin Miller, who had recently returned from abroad and was now traveling in the East, stopped in Hartford on his way from Boston to New York; on 28 May he wrote to John Hay, “Dear Hay. Am here with Clemens but will be at the Windsor Hotel NY this evening for a day or so” (RPB-JH). Miller had been in Boston to arrange for the publication of The Ship in the Desert, a book-length poem that Roberts Brothers issued in October. On about 25 May, Thomas K. Beecher, pastor of the Langdon family’s church in Elmira, arrived for a week’s visit, during which he exchanged pulpits with Twichell, conducting two services at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church on Sunday, 30 May. That day he wrote to his wife, Julia, on Clemens’s typewriter:
i amuse myself with this machine again while the folks are eating dinner down stairs.
i preached to an attentive audience this morning. . . .
well: it was as good a sermon as i can preach in a gothic church. i’m sorry for twichell, or any other man who is doomed to preach in such a cave of a place. (CtHSD)
Beecher stayed with the Clemenses until the afternoon of Wednesday, 2 June. The third arrival was William Wright, who had accepted Clemens’s invitation to stay in Hartford while writing his book. On 16 May the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise announced his departure for the East:
Mr. William Wright, better known by the nom de plume of “Dan De Quille,” and for many years the leading local editor of the Enterprise, will leave for the Atlantic States to-morrow evening, for the purpose of preparing for publication a volume of historical and local sketches relating to the Com-stock and its surroundings. For several years Mr. Wright and Samuel L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”) were associate local reporters on the Enterprise, and the forthcoming volume of Mr. Wright will show that he shares largely in those literary characteristics which have placed his old associate at the head of American humorists. Mr. Wright proceeds Eastward with his notes, and may possibly prepare his volume under the roof of Mr. Clemens’ elegant cottage at Hartford. The exact scope and character of the work have not yet been determined by the author; yet they will doubtless be confined to a history of the discovery and development of the marvelous riches of the Comstock, and to personal incidents and sketches connected therewith. We predict that the volume will be unusually attractive. It cannot be otherwise, considering the rich and varied materials within the reach of the author, and the style in which the feast will be served. Mr. Wright will probably be absent about six months. The venture is taken at the solicitation of friends, of whom no man has more in Nevada. (“Literary,” 2)
On 3 June Wright wrote his sister: “I met Joaquin Miller here and liked him much better than I supposed I should. He has got his hair cut and with his long hair much of his silly affectation departed, as with Samson of old, in regard to his strength” (2 and 3 June 75, CU-BANC). Dinner at the Clemenses’ on Thursday, 27 May, included all three visitors and was undoubtedly a lively occasion. Beecher briefly described it in a letter to Mrs. Langdon: “It was shad as became Friday—It was Lamb & peas as became spring. It was Joaquin Miller that ate of it, till he was satisfied. It was I that did likewise. And Mr Wright who writes out west as De-quill did as we did” (27 and 29 May 75, CtHMTH).
Wright lodged at the Union Hall Hotel on Farmington Avenue. Daytimes he spent at work with Clemens in a study they set up in the loft above Clemens’s stable, so as to avoid household distractions. “Don’t laugh,” he wrote his sister on 2 June, “as his stable is as fine as most houses.” In addition to advancing his book, Wright sent occasional letters to the Virginia City Enterprise, describing for his readers his trip across the continent in a Pullman car, his three-day stay in New York, and his exploration of eastern towns—Newport, Providence, and Nantucket—as well as Martha’s Vineyard. Unfortunately, no letter about his arrival in Hartford has been found (“Personal,” New York Evening Post, 25 May 75, 2; Marberry, 141–47; “New Publications,” Boston Globe, 13 Oct 75, 3, and 16 Oct 75, 2; “The Asylum Hill Congregational Church” and “Hotels,” Hartford Courant, 26 May 75, 1; Twichell, 1:103; Wright 1875–d).