April 23 Saturday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss, acknowledging the quarterly statement for Innocents Abroad. Sam wrote that he planned to buy his mother “a beautiful home in a village [Fredonia, New York] near here—my sister paying the other five or six thousand.” Sam requested a copy of Innocents Abroad be sent to Bart Bowen’s widow, Sarah. Bart, like Sam’s brother Henry, died from a steamboat accident on May 21, 1868 [MTL 4: 117].

Sam’s story, “The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper,” was printed in the Buffalo Express. This was a revision of “The Bad Little Boy who did not Come to Grief,” published earlier [McCullough 182]. Note: it also ran in the May issue of the Galaxy.