August 7 Saturday – Sam accompanied the Langdon family on a return trip to Elmira. By Sunday AM he was back in Buffalo [Reigstad 62].

The San Francisco Evening Bulletin, p.1, ran a positive review of IA, observing that “America has, within the past few years, developed a new type of humor.”

…the book is one of the most fresh, breezy, stimulating, and delightful we have read in many a day. It is full of vigorous vitality—full of brawn and marrow. The humor is often exquisitely rich in quality….But Mr. Clemens is not only a humorist, but a master of descriptive writing. Occasionally we detect a fine poetic vein (“Mark Twain’s Pilgrimage”) [Budd, Reviews 37-8].

From the Buffalo Express “People and Things Columns” by Mark Twain:

Chang and Eng, the Siamese twins, have an aggregate of seventeen children, but most of them belong to Chang, because Eng was absent part of the time.

The river Nile is lower than it has been for 150 years. This news will be chiefly interesting to parties who remember the former occasion [Reigstad 232].