Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):

On the envelope Clemens noted, “From Dr. J. G. Holland, (‘Timothy Titcomb’) poet & editor of Scribner’s Monthly.” Holland alluded to Armsmear: The Home, the Arm, and the Armory of Samuel Colt. A Memorial, by Henry Barnard (New York: Alvord, 1866). Only one city had as yet been covered in Scribner’s illustrated series: “The Liverpool of America” (Baltimore), by Edward King, in the April issue. Later in 1875, two more articles appeared: “The City of the Golden Gate,” by Clemens’s San Francisco Evening Bulletin friend Samuel Williams, in July, and “Chicago,” by J. W. Sheahan, in September (9:681–95; 10:266–85, 529–51). Clemens was not favorably disposed toward Holland: in 1872 he had written a scathing rebuttal—which he never published—to Holland’s attacks on platform humorists (see L5 , 77–78 n. 1, 122–24 n. 5; L2 , 209).

Warner was abroad. Charles Hopkins Clark (1848–1926) graduated from Yale in 1871 and joined the staff of the Courant that same year. He became known for his public spirit, promoting civic improvement with clear, cogent, and sometimes humorous editorials. Holland presumably followed Clemens’s suggestion, since Clark contributed a twenty-page article on Hartford, “The Charter Oak City,” to Scribner’s Monthly for November 1876. He later wrote three other pieces on Hartford—“The Growth of the County,” “Insurance,” and “The Press”—for J. Hammond Trumbull’s 1886 Memorial History of Hartford County (Charles Hopkins Clark 1876, 1886 [bib13419], 1886 [bib13420], 1886 [bib13421]; Burpee, 2:674, 3:26–29; McNulty, 101).