July 4 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to his attorney Charles Perkins, restating the value of his house and goods for insurance purposes. Sam’s brother-in-law, Theodore Crane, suffered loss of a building insured for $12,000 that the “consultation-gang of insurance-thieves” had said was only worth $8,000 [MTLE 2: 88].

Sam began a letter to Howells that he finished on July 6. He was still bothered by a second reading of Parts one and two of his Bermuda travelogue piece, and told Howells to not print it should he have any doubts. Sam had “piled up 151 MS pages” on his amateur detective play. “Never had so much fun over anything in my life—never such consuming interest & delight.”

Sam wrote about not being able to see President Hayes, due to “that old ass of a private secretary” taking him for George Francis Train. He’d go and call on Hayes again, he said.

“I shall go in my war paint; & if I am obstructed, the nation will have the unusual spectacle of a private secretary with a pen over one ear & a tomahawk over the other” [MTLE 2: 89]. Note: William K. Rogers (d. 1893), the former partner of President Hayes,  was the “old ass” secretary.

After reading all of the Atlantic he also wrote of a prolific New England writer, Rose Terry Cooke:

“Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke’s story was a ten-strike. I wish she would write 12 old-time New England tales a year” [MTP; Gribben 158]. Note: see Cooke’s of Aug. 18, 1880 and others indexed.