March 5 Saturday – In Boston, Howells wrote to Sam and declined to follow up on Leathers’ story.

I should think the American earl’s autobiography would be delightful; but I dread to have him put in possession of my name as that of one having anything to do with his MS. While he lived, I don’t see how I could use his history; and that kind of man survives everybody. Really, it seems to me that I can’t do anything about it; and if I can’t, I suppose you want your letters back [MTHL 1: 359].

Sam wrote from Hartford to Mary Mason Fairbanks. Mary had tried to enlist Sam’s help in obtaining the position of personal secretary to President Garfield for her son Charles Fairbanks. Sam didn’t like the idea, being the sort of position which was usually given to a personal friend of a president. He thought it a dead end:

Why, it is simply burying a man for four years!—burying him fathoms deep in obscurity & insignificance. For four years Mr. Rodgers has sat yonder in Hayes’s ante-room, like a footman, taking visitors’ cards & deciding whether they might go in at once or must cool their heels & wait their turn (he decided the latter in my case, once dang him,) & what is he now? Who knows him?—what is he good for?—& how much has his long & very peculiar service advanced him? It sums up about as follows: 000,000,000 [MTP].

Sam also wrote to an unidentified person. He requested copies of The Schoolmaster’s Trial by Alice Perry, Scribner & Sons (1881), and History of Modern Europe, by Charles Alan Fyffe (1845-1892), Henry Holt & Co. (1881) [MTP]. Note: The latter book is in Gribben p. 249.

George Stronach, Hartford billed 75 cents for “repair lock kitchen door”; paid May 28; Hartford & Connecticut R.R. sold Sam “1 iron safe” for $5.94 [MTP].

Western Union  bill for Mar. 31 shows a telegram to New York on this date (see entry for others).