March 28 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to William S. Andrews, a fellow lecturer and member of the Lotos Club. Andrews asked Sam’s help with his lecture, but Sam declined, being “buried up to my eyes in work & that work is standing still; for my wife is ill & has been for some little time.” Sam hoped they might meet briefly as they passed through NY on the way to Elmira just as soon as Livy was able to travel [MTL 6: 96].

Sam also wrote to Meriwether Jeff Thompson, an ex-Confederate general known as the “Missouri Swamp Fox.” Thompson appeared in Chapters 16-17 of The Gilded Age and sent Sam a long letter about persons living and dead. Sam and Thompson may have met between mid-Feb.1857, when Sam began his pilot apprenticeship and Feb. 13, 1859. Warner met Thompson in 1853-4 while working as a surveyor for the railroad [MTL 6: 96-100].