This letter has been dated on the evidence of the partly legible postmark (“feb 2◇”) and the stationery, which Clemens first used in December 1873 and used frequently in February 1874. The only possible “Monday” was therefore 23 February. Although Clemens sometimes used the same stationery in the late 1870s, he could not have written the letter later than 1876 (see note 3).

The American Asylum for Deaf and Dumb (now the American School for the Deaf) in Hartford was the pioneer American institution for the education of the deaf. Incorporated in 1816, it opened on 15 April 1817 under the leadership of Thomas H. Gallaudet (1787–1851). In 1820 it obtained from Congress a large grant of land in Alabama Territory, which it converted to an endowment to pay its operating costs. The asylum did not have a superintendent but was led by a principal, who from February 1871 until his death in 1878 was Edward C. Stone. No evidence has been found that Clemens was acquainted with him (Trumbull, 1:425–30; Geer 1873, 286; American School for the Deaf).

James Clinton Wheeler (1857–83) had lost his hearing after contracting scarlet fever as a young child. He enrolled at the American Asylum for Deaf and Dumb in 1872 and left in 1876 to become a postal clerk in New York City, dying a few years later of consumption. It was a fifteen-minute walk from the school, on Asylum Street, to the house the Clemenses rented in 1874. Nothing is known of the arrangements made for Wheeler’s visits, but, according to W. Winfield McChord, executive director of the successor American School for the Deaf, “the students were under constant supervision and never left the campus without written permission” (McChord to Michael B. Frank, 25 Feb 2000, CU-MARK; 31 Jan 74 to Fuller, n. 1click to open link).