May 29 Thursday – Sam wrote from the Normandy Hotel in Paris to Andrew Chatto, asking him to send a copy of Roughing It to Ivan Turgenev [MTLE 4: 66].
Sam also wrote to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett about the progress on his book, and of moving to the quiet side of the house to escape street noises, and of Samuel Moffett’s visit:
…every night, & we have a vast love & admiration of him…Sam spends all his time in the Herald reading rooms, but we don’t grumble at that; he has a level head & can be trusted to know what is best for himself; & he has a purpose: a cleanly-defined purpose is sheet-anchor, main-stay, everything. A boy who has that is all right.
Sam added:
We are to arrive at Condover Hall, Mr Cholmondeley’s country seat, in England, July 28, to stay a week—so we probably leave Paris a week earlier & loaf through Holland.
About Orion’s excommunication, Sam wrote:
It is funny to see them Excommunicating Orion—they’d better have saved themselves the trouble & Mollie the distress—he’ll be a deacon in that same church next year—& a deacon in some other church a year after. I judge Orion wrote a pretty good lecture….But he’d better look out how he prances around with that lecture—some of the godly will hang him [MTLE 4: 67-8].
Sam also wrote a rather tender letter about the matter to Orion:
My Dear Bro— / Never mind the Excommunication. If you made a square deal & told your honest thought in the lecture, I wouldn’t care a damn what people say. People won’t approve, anyway, no matter what a body says. Your heresy won’t damn anybody that doesn’t deserve it, perhaps…I judge you wrote a good lecture. I am bound to say you showed a deal of moral courage to deliver it. And your honesty in what you preach is not open to doubt, while I think the same cannot be said of Beecher and Talmage. We send love to you & Mollie. We leave here in a month. Yr Bro Sam [MTLE 4: 69].
Frank Bliss wrote to Sam decrying the lack of copyright law between countries, and discussed the Riley book matter, about which Perkins and Elisha Bliss had discussed. “Father says he can’t fairly release you from any contract & there is no necessity that he should. The contract for a book exists in the Riley Contract for all books except “Tom Sawyer”… [MTP].