April 25 Wednesday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam wrote to Frank Bliss.

Col. Harvey has been here, & I arranged with him that the Harpers are to issue no cheap editions of the old books….That is all stopped.

If you were going to issue a cheap “Library of Humor” it is just as well that the plates were melted, for we don’t want any cheap editions, I think. They don’t pay. / Sincerely… [MTP].

Sam also replied to Francis Dalzell Finlay, who was staying at the Hotel Metropole, in Brighton.

Yes, sir, there is a Devil; but you must not speak disrespectfully of him, for he is an uncle of mine.

Meantime, you will land in his summer resort before you are ready if you keep on trusting your carcase to doctors: Why not to shoemakers—since you must do insane things? [MTP]. Note: Finlay’s incoming is not extant. Sam met Finlay in 1873 in Belfast, Ireland. See entries on Finlay in Vol. 1 & 2.

Sam also wrote to his sister, Pamela Moffett, then in Phoebus, Va.

We have moved heaven & hell & the earth, trying to find out something definite about Osteopathy— something to justify us in venturing to cross the ocean with the prospect of finding it as good as Kellgren’s method; but all our friends & relatives are damned fools incredibly indifferent & incompetent. (I am not including you.) At last I am applying to Sam Moffett. He does not belong to the D.F.’s; he is not indifferent, he is not incompetent. We shall get the facts, this time. Then we shall know whether we may venture home or not. I cannot think why God, in a moment of idle & unintelligent fooling, invented this bastard human race; why, after inventing it, he chose to make each individual of it a nest of disgusting & unnecessary diseases, a tub of rotten offal. / With love & best wishes…[MTP].