May – Sam’s short story, “About Magnanimous-Incident Literature” ran in the Atlantic Monthly
[Wells, 22]. During this month, Sam pinned a clipping from a James Payn essay, “An Adventure in a
Forest; or, Dickens’s Maypole Inn,” to his Notebook 14. “Payn describes his futile search for Epping
Forest and the famous Maypole Inn of Barnaby Rudge” [Gribben 536]

An entry following one dated May 25 in Sam’s notebook decries the censorship of his age:

“By far the very funniest things that ever happened or were ever said, are unprintable (in our day). A
great pity. It was not so in the freer age of Boccacio & Rableais” [MTNJ 2: 87].