April 30 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Miss Mary Russell Perkins, confirming the identity of the “poet lariat,” a label first heard in his Nevada days, but which he later applied to Bloodgood H. Cutter (1817-1906), a passenger on the Quaker City excursion, because Dr. Edward Andrews “distorted the phrase ‘Poet Laureate’ into Poet Lariat” [MTNJ 1: 334n77]:

Yes, it is the same mildewed idiot. His friends call him a lunatic—but that is pretty fulsome flattery; one cannot become a lunatic without first having brains. Yes, he is the “Poet Lariat” [MTLE 5: 91].

From Sam’s notebook on the Quaker City:

He is 50 years old, & small for his age. He dresses in homespun, & is a simple-minded, honest, old-fashioned farmer, with a strange proclivity for writing rhymes. He writes them on all possible subjects, & gets them printed on slips of paper, with his portrait at the head. These he will give to any man that comes along, whether he has anything against him or not [MTNJ 1: 334].

In Boston, Howells wrote to Sam, praising the piece on John T. Lewis:

“I don’t think I told you how very good I found that letter of your black hero’s. Isnt the incident old enough to let you let me Club it? And this letter of his—it’s beautiful” [MTHL 1: 305].