August 26 Thursday – Sam finished a letter of Aug. 25 from Buffalo to Livy of his plans to be home in Elmira about 8 PM Friday. He enclosed notices of the Innocents Abroad [MTL 3: 322-3].

“Only a Nigger,” attributed to Sam, ran in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 22].

Spoofing an attempt by one Professor Jenkins to cross Niagara Falls on a bicycle, Sam wrote the following “telegram,” which ran in the Express. As a new editor of the paper, he couldn’t put his own name to such a piece, since he’d been heralded as a literary lion.

To the Editor of the Express:

I borrowed Jenkins’ velocipede and tried the slack rope performance over Niagara, but it is only a partial success. I have got to the middle, two hundred and twenty feet above the river, as well as Jenkins or any other man could do it, but I cannot get any farther. I stopped like that other ass to have my picture taken, and I can’t get her started again. I cannot back up or go ahead. I have been roosting between heaven and earth for a matter of eighteen hours now. My position is exceedingly ridiculous, not to say uncomfortable. Near-sighted English sportsmen are practicing on me with shot-guns and such things because they take me for some sort of a curious bird —and I am — I am a rooster. They have torn my clothes a good deal. How am I going to get out of this? I have been suspended long enough — I wish to suspend the exhibition for a while, now. But if this thing is going to be permanent, please send me an umbrella. It is warm here.

P.S. — Does my salary go on? Because I was instructed to try this atrocious experiment by one of the Express firm. He said it would be a good card for the paper if I succeeded — but this wretched thing won’t budge, you understand. I was to have been married to-day. I wish I was out of this.

Yours, in great suspension.

MICHAEL J. MURPHY, Reporter, Express [The Twainian, Feb 1945 p3].