May 15 Monday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Elisha Bliss, acknowledging receipt of $703.35 royalties of some 3,800 sales of IA (Bliss’ letter not extant). The book was going well, and his daily output even exceeded his best on the Innocents book, going over 30 pages of manuscript daily. The inspiration had found Sam and he “couldn’t bear to lose a single moment” of it. “So I will stay here & peg away as long as it lasts.” Sam was two-thirds done with the book, but his plan was to write an equal amount more and then “cull from the mass the very best chapters & discard the rest” [MTL 4: 390-1].

Sam kept his ear to the literary marketplace. His fear about being overexposed as a writer, not to mention the difficulties in writing humor in the midst of the Buffalo tragedies, had led to a retreat and a plan. He also may have guessed that the faddish popularity of Harte’s “Heathen Chinee” poem, and the sensation Harte’s trek east had caused would fade, when he wrote:

“The reaction is beginning & my stock is looking up. I am getting the bulliest offers for books & almanacs, am flooded with lecture invitations, & one periodical offers me $6,000 cash for 12 articles, of any length & on any subject, treated humorously or otherwise” [MTL 4: 392]. Note: Bliss replied on May 17.

May 15–June 10 Saturday – Sometime between these dates Sam wrote from Elmira to Donn Piatt of the Galaxy. After seeing the June and July Galaxy editions, which contained “The Galaxy Club-Room” column by Piatt, Sam wrote this facetious letter [MTL 4: 393-4]. For most of this period, Sam was hard at work on Roughing It, keeping the pace he’d set earlier.