September 7 Sunday – Sam replied to Joe Twichell’s Sept. 2.
I don’t remember which book that convict’s letter is in. I think maybe it is in the back part of the Tramp Abroad; or might it be in Old Times on the Mississippi?
Bang away about me as freely as you please. When you include things from my letters it will be safest to select the extracts first & submit them to Livy—it will save wasting comment on passages which might perish under her blue pencil.
Sam hadn’t been writing anything lately, the last piece was “A Defence of General Funston,” which would run in the May 1902 issue of North American Review.
I was blackguarding that military louse. I hope to do it some more before I die. McKinley, Jay Gould, Funston—; isn’t that a precious gang? The Holy Trinity of America worship, begetters of present American political, commercial & military morals. There’s one good thing: we’ve struck bottom, & can’t sink any lower [MTP].
The New York World Magazine, p.3, ran “My First Vacation and My Last,” about Sam taking a vacation at York Harbor, Maine [MTCI 469-74].