September 10 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Etta Booth, a girl of eight when Sam first saw her in Virginia City in 1863. Etta had written to Sam from New York. Sam responded:

“Your letter has almost made a grandfather of me, it carried me so far back into the wasted centuries…I have reached the age where one puts such things out of his mind & keeps them out—for they remind him not that he is growing old, but that he is old” [MTLE 2: 150].

Note: See MTL 2: 72n2, which claims Etta “was probably the daughter of Lucius A. Booth of Virginia City, proprietor of the Winfield Mill and Mining Company.” Sam later ran into Etta by accident in New York in Apr. 1906 and recalled having first met her at a ball in Virginia City at “the beginning of the winter of 1862” and estimating her age then at thirteen. See more about Etta in Jan. 7, 1863 entry, and in MTA 2: 24.

Sam also wrote to Charles Warren Stoddard, who had sought advice to publish a travel book. Sam discouraged Stoddard about the possibility of a subscription house publishing a travel book at that time, but invited Charles to come for a visit, when Sam would fill him up with “good advice & Scotch whisky” [MTLE 2: 151].

Maze Edwards wrote from Cincinnati to Sam: “Parsloe and I are on our way back from St. Louis, to join the Rochester Co. with whom we commence Thursday….The business in St. Louis was not favorable, hence I have not been able to send Mr. Perkins, anything other than a statement for the past week “ [MTP]. Note: Sam’s new road agent for Ah Sin.