December 31 to January 1, 1877 Monday – New Year’s Eve. Sam and Livy attended a party at Isabella Beecher Hooker’s Nook Farm home, packed with neighbors and friends. Reflective of 19th Century obsession with paranormal and spiritual pursuits, plus Isabella’s megalomania, several mediums waited in an upstairs room for the new year to reveal Isabella’s vision, that she was to usher in a new order of government. “Spirits” had told her that she would rule the world. Sam mistook one of the mediums for a coachman. Isabella’s daughter, Alice Hooker Day, was a close friend of Livy’s, and let the secret out about the “queerest looking lot” upstairs trying to conjure up the new order [Willis 107-8]. (See Jan. 1, 1877 entry; also Andrews 59-62 for a fuller account of this bizarre evening.)