March 18 Thursday – Sam was a guest of the Langdons, who were entertaining a well-known guest, Wendell Phillips, former abolitionist and social reformer. Phillips gave a lecture in the evening at the Elmira Opera House on Daniel O’Connell, Irish political leader. During his visit, Sam had said something derogatory about Phillips for which he expressed embarrassment to Livy in the margin of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. This book he was marking for Livy would afterward be known as their “courting book” [MTL 3: 174-5].