January 15 Sunday – The Brooklyn Eagle, page 1, ran an article headlined “SAGEBRUSH SKETCHES, How Mark Twain’s Brightest Effort Was Kept from Print.” The paper gave credit without a prior date to the San Francisco Call. It seems Joe Goodman once called upon Sam to write up a fancy new saloon in Virginia City. Sam gathered a box of liquors from the saloon and “arranged them in a long row,” then tasting and describing each in print. The foreman compositor took it upon himself to conclude Sam had been drunk when he wrote the piece and thus “straightened the whole thing out.”

Louis Fréchette wrote to Sam in French, urging him to come to the banquet on the 31st in Holyoke [MTP].