September 3 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss about the New York Herald’s favorable notice for his book. The review argued that it was not too irreverent, a criticism some reviewers made [MTL 3: 329].

Sam also wrote to Henry Crane, who had kept requesting Sam to lecture, and to Livy.

I am so disappointed, Redpath says he can’t get me free from Boston & 2 or 3 other places—& so I submit, & have written him to let me out to lyceums far & near, & for half the winter or all of it…It isn’t worth the bother of getting well familiarized with a lecture & then deliver it only half a dozen times…And yet the distress of it is, that the paper will suffer by my absence…

Sam argued against putting the wedding off until spring [MTL 3: 330-5].

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

·       Geo. Francis Train has ceased to be a sensation in California, and sighs for another foreign jail or some reliable way of making a fresh noise in the world. It is strange that with his fertility of invention in this respect it does not occur to him to swallow a torpedo and jump out of the window.

·       It is estimated that more copies of Lord Byron’s works have been sold in this country within the last fifteen days than in seven years previously. And what is particularly aggravating, is, that people read the book now, whereas they used only to buy it for Christmas presents and centre-table ornaments [Reigstad 250].