December – Sam wrote sometime during the month from Hartford to Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815-1884), well-known abolitionist, newspaper editor, lecturer, crusader, feminist, and Civil War nurse. Jane wrote Sam on Jan. 19, 1880 to apologize for her publishers’ use of Sam’s name and praise in advertisements of her autobiography [Gribben 681]. Sam thanked Jane for a book she’d sent (probably Half a Century (1880), one of her two books, the other in 1853).

“The book sets one in the midst of the scenes it paints & makes him hope, despair & exult by turns, & by turns curse & blaspheme” [MTLE 5: 215].

Sam wrote a note and drew a cat sleeping to an unidentified person, probably a child. “The front end is right, but she jumped up & ran, meantime, & that makes the other end wrong” [MTLE 5: 217].