November 22 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to the editor of the Hartford Courant. After a long harangue against new postal regulations, which required street addresses, Sam concluded:

For many years it has been England’s boast that her postal system is so admirable that you can’t so cripple the direction of a letter that the Post office Department won’t manage some way to find the person the missive is intended for. We could say that too, once. But we have retired a hundred years, within the last two months, & now it is our boast that only the brightest & thoughtfulest & knowingest men’s letters will ever be permitted to reach their destinations, & that those of the mighty majority of the American people,—the heedless, the unthinking, the illiterate,—will be rudely shot by the shortest route to the Dead Letter office & destruction. It seems to me that this new decree is very decidedly un-American. Mark Twain [MTLE 4: 155].

Sam also wrote to Frank Fuller, about the invitation from Andrew H.H. Dawson to some event, the date being up in the air (see Nov. 26 entry). Evidently, Fuller had a new baby boy, and Sam sent congratulations. He concluded:

“I’m just about to start in on another ten thousand dollar venture—a patent. Want to come in?—in case it continues to look good? Slote is to run it” [MTLE 4: 156]. Note: Slote’s patent was likely the new engraving process called Kaolatype, which Sam eventually bought 80 per cent interest in [A. Hoffman 275]. Note: see also AMT 2: 489 for more on Sam’s Kaolatype venture.

Lilly Warner came with her husband George to billiards night, and spent the last half of the evening visiting with Livy. “How lovely their house is now” [Salsbury 113]. Note: Friday night was the usual billiards night but this was sometimes changed to Thursday or Saturday, depending on other events in town. There is mention in these sources of the wives gathering downstairs on such nights.