August 18 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Franklin Whitmore who had spent some vacation time with the Clemenses at Branford, Conn. earlier in the summer. Sam squared accounts with Whitmore on his share of the meals. He also enclosed a:

…letter received from Mr. Watrous some time ago. Show it to Mr. Bennett & others—or tell them about it—& ask them to keep a strict eye on that conductor, & report him the very first time they catch him in an impoliteness to anybody. If they don’t want the disagreeable office of reporting him, ask them to give the facts to me, & I will gladly do the reporting.

Sam ended with a bit about news of Garfield’s failing “makes us all apprehensive & gloomy-spirited” [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Howells, who wrote on Aug. 16 that the Ashfield, Mass. audience would be:

…farmer-folks of the region, quiet and dull on top, but full of grit and fun; they’re fond of speaking, and rather cultivated, but not spoiled. They know you, like a book and you can trust all your points to them…You speak at a cold public dinner in the Town Hall.—I can’t go: we are a hospital: our dear girl has to lie abed now all the time—rest cure. I wrote you at Montowese [Branford, Conn.] on Friday. How I wish you could give us a day whilst you’re on this side of the mountain [MTHL 1: 365-6].

Sam’s letter sent sympathy for Winny Howells, the seventeen-year-old daughter who had suffered a nervous breakdown. Sam also rued the critical state of President Garfield, who was shot and would die in September. If Garfield died, Sam wrote, he could not go to Ashfield or “enjoy a festival of any sort…” [366].

Zo Swisshelm (Jane Swisshelm’s daughter) wrote to Sam unable to find a good picture of her mother that Sam had asked for, but they all looked cross. She did enclose one, however [MTP].

August 18? Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to John B. Downing (“Alligator Jack”) (See Aug. 15).

“Dear Major: And has it come to this that the dead rise up & speak? For I supposed that you were dead, it has been so long since I heard your name.”

Sam mentioned another old pilot, Grant Marsh; he hoped to see Downing when he made a trip up the Mississippi the following year; once again, Sam clung to the story that he’d stolen his nom de plume from Isaiah Sellers [MTP].

Sam also wrote from Elmira to John Esten Cooke (1830-1886) American novelist best known for his books about his home state, Virginia, including two on Robert E. Lee. Sam would have said his writing style was high-falootin’. The first two pages of the letter are lost, but the third discusses subscription publishing, with an interesting highlight about Sam’s attitude toward Osgood:

All subscription houses in America are “equipped” alike; for they all use the same canvassers—but they differ in that some of the houses (in Philadelphia, for instance,) use some energy & some money.

Osgood is organizing a subscription department, & will make his first experiment with a book of mine this fall [P&P] I shall have one advantage, there, for if he fails to sell my book he will at least not swindle me [MTP].