February 19 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Elisha Bliss. Sam enclosed the Feb. 12 from Rufus Hatch, vice president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, requesting 35 copies of Sam’s books to use on their steamship line. Sam’s facetious reply included:

Friend Bliss: / Through being my publisher you have become a man of grace, & honest withal. Now here is your chance to disseminate wholesome literature, visit a far country, & dispose of a troublesome relative of mine, all at the same time.

Therefore, I propose that you stock those 35 marine libraries with nice copies of my books; also that you make a jolly summer voyage to San Francisco as my proxy, in one of the choice vessels of the line; & likewise that you see that my poor old excellent but imperishable aunt Rachel is shipped westward in the slowest & rottenest craft Mr. Hatch can furnish, even if he has to charter one from some other company; & finally, that you personally superintend the embalming of my aunt—for that, you understand, is the main thing. If she should not be in a condition for embalming, at the end of the voyage, you must sue & compel the company to fulfill the contract. (But mind, I don’t want her sent back here, even embalmed—she has been embalmed before, but it wouldn’t hold) [MTL 6: 38; MTPO].