March 31 Wednesday – Sam paid $23 to his tailor, Cyrus Fay. Perhaps Sam figured he would lecture after all, and would need new clothes. Sam and Livy, in Elmira, began a letter to Mary Mason Fairbanks that he finished on Apr. 1. The March 31 portion:

Dear Mother—

Bless you I don’t want to go to California at all—& really I have not by any means determined to go, as yet. I know very well that I ought to go, but I haven’t the slightest inclination to do it. Indeed, indeed, indeed I do want to go & see you first, but if I do that I shall have to go to St. Louis also, & I just hate the idea of that. I don’t think April a good month to take Livy to Cleveland in, do you? The grass & flowers & foliage will not be out, then; & wherever Livy goes, Nature ought to have self-respect enough to do look her level best, you know.

We have read & re-shipped some fifty pages of proof, & it looks like it is going to take a month to finish it all. I rather hope it will take six.

I am in exile here at the office, for an hour, while the girls take their chemistry lesson. However, I suppose it is about over, now, & so I will return. (Livy will begin to feel anxious.)

I saw Dr. & Mrs. What you may call him—the Comm[i]ssioner of the US of America to Europe Asia & Africa, at Sharon, Pa., the other day. They came 20 miles to hear me lecture. Lord, They ought to read the book—there is where the interest will be, for them. Mrs. G. is grown stout & fat, & absolutely immense. She looks as tall & as huge as Pompey’s Pillar, & inconceivably vulgar. She cannot weigh less than three hundred pounds. This is honest [MTL 3: 184-6]. Note: Dr. William Gibson and wife Susan Gibson. The Gibsons were on the Quaker City and a target of Sam’s in IA though never mentioned by name.

Sam completed his Mar. 9 letter to Susan Crane:

I have told you all the news that the others would not be likely to tell you (except that we play euchre every night, & sing “Geer,” which is Livy’s favorite, & “Even Me,” which is mine, & a dozen other hymns—favorites of the other members)—& although this news sounds trifling, it still mentions names you love to hear, & things that are familiar to your memory—& those features of a letter were what I always liked best when in exile in the lands beyond the Rocky Mountains—so I offer no apologies [181].