March 17 Friday – Sam’s letter of Mar. 16 to Richard McCloud was read aloud at the Hartford Knights of St. Patrick’s third annual banquet. It also ran Mar. 18 in the Hartford Courant and was in the New York Times on Mar. 19.
DEAR SIR: I am very sorry that I cannot be with the Knights of St. Patrick tomorrow evening. In this Centennial year we ought all to find a peculiar pleasure in doing honor to the memory of a man whose good name has endured through fourteen centuries. We ought to find pleasure in it for the reason that at this time we naturally have a fellow-feeling for such a man. He wrought a great work in his day. He found Ireland a prosperous republic, and looked about him to see if he might find some useful thing to turn his hand to. He observed that the President of that republic was in the habit of sheltering his great officials from deserved punishment, so he lifted up his staff and smote him, and he died. He found that the Secretary of War had been so unbecomingly economical as to have laid up $12,000 a year out of a salary of $8,000, and he killed him. He found that the Secretary of the Interior always prayed over every separate and distinct barrel of salt beef that was intended for the unconverted savage, and then kept that beef himself, so he killed him also. He found that the Secretary of the Navy knew more about handling suspicious claims than he did about handling a ship, and he at once made an end of him. He found that a very foul Private Secretary had been engineered through a sham trial, so he destroyed him. He discovered that the congress which pretended to prodigious virtue was very anxious to investigate an ambassador who had dishonored the country abroad, but was equally anxious to prevent the appointment of any spotless man to a similar post; that this Congress had no God but party, no system of morals but party policy; no vision but a bat’s vision, and no reason or excuse for existing anyhow. Therefore he massacred that Congress to the last man.
When he finished his great work he said, in his figuratively way, “Lo, I have destroyed all the reptiles in Ireland.”
St. Patrick had no politics; his sympathies lay with the right — that was politics enough. When he came across a reptile he forgot to inquire whether he was a Democrat or a Republican, but simply exalted his staff and “let him have it.” Honored be his name — I wish we had him here to trim us up for the Centennial. But that cannot be. His staff, which was the symbol of real, not sham, reform is idle. However, we still have with us the symbol of Truth — George Washington’s little hatchet — for I know they’ve buried it [MTLE 1: 30-31].
Sam also wrote to James Redpath wanting to give his “Roughing It” lecture in New York sometime in the next three weeks, pretty short notice for a New York talk. Sam preferred Chickering Hall. He did not mention Dr. John Brown by name, but the money from the lecture was meant for him, so that he might retire. Sam wrote he was to give the lecture “next Wednesday” (Mar.22) in New Haven [MTLE 1: 32].