February 8 Monday – In Hartford, Sam telegraphed that he’d sent $1,000 to President DuRell of the Salt Lake City National Bank to furnish bonds in a legal action to stop unauthorized production of the Gilded Age play there [MTL 6: 373].

Sam also telegraphed Tilford & Hagan three times. First, Sam was sending instructions to his Hartford counsel, Charles Perkins. Second, Sam would make “no compromise with thieves on any terms,” – a reply to a suggestion by Gill that the play be allowed to go on one night with a division of receipts. Sam won the case in court and the play was stopped. Willie Gill objected strongly to being called a “thief” and pointed out that Sam owed a great deal of Colonel Sellers’ character to Wilkins Micawber by Dickens and that Gill was ignorant of the 1870 law which gave the novelist exclusive right to dramatize it [MTL 6: 374-5].

Sam also wrote to Samuel S. Cox,  Democrat congressman from New York, about the legal length of copyright. He enclosed a ironic petition, which concluded that since the right of real property was perpetual but the right of literary property was limited to 42 years, that all property should thus be limited to 42 years [MTL 6: 376-7].