October 3 Tuesday – Sam wrote a long letter from Hartford to Charles Webster, explaining agreements past and actions taken with Slote & Co. about payments on scrapbook sales [MTBus 201-3].

Sam also typed a response to Charles T.H. Palmer (1827-1897). Palmer was an early resident of San Francisco and Berkeley, California. He practiced law in San Francisco and was involved in various business interests. He served as one of the first trustee of Folsom prison. On Sept. 19 Palmer sent a list of questions asking about Sam’s speech patterns, whether he was ever a stammerer. If not, was Sam’s “extreme deliberation in speech natural or adopted?”

ALL THE QUESTIONS WHICH COME UNDER THE HEAD OF ‘WERE YOU A STAMMERER’ ARE ANSWERABLE BY SIMPLY AND SOLIDLY, NO…IT IS NATURAL, NOT ADOPTED. I CAN GIVE MY MOTHER THREE WORDS THE START ON A TEN WORD SENTENCE AND COME IN AT THE HOME STRETCH MAKING THE HEAD

I HAVE NEVER STAMMERED, HAVE NEVER HAD ANY OBSTRUCTION IN MY SPEECH EXCEPT SLOW DELIVERY, AND THAT OBSTRUCTION PERCEPTABLE TO OTHER PEOPLE ONLY; IT DOES NOT SEEM SLOW TO ME, AND WHEN NIGGER MINSTRELS IMITATE IT ON THE PLATFORM TO WHAT FRIENDS OF MINE CALL ABSOLUTE PERFECTION, IT ALWAYS FALLS UPON MY EAR AS A MOST LIMITLESS AND EXTRAVAGANT EXAGGERATION [MTP].

Palmer’s interest in stammering and speech patterns may have been professional or simply a personal interest. Sam ended the letter “Please give my love to Stoddard when you see him…” denoting that Palmer was probably still in Berkeley or possibly in Hawaii.

Sam also typed a letter to Howells, who was still in London:

“I do not expect to find you, so I shan’t spend many words on you to wind up in the perdition of some European dead letter office. I just want to say that the closing installments of the story [A Modern Instance] are prodigious.”

Sam figured he needed another five to ten days to finish his current book, Life on the Mississippi [MTHL 1: Selected 199-200]. (Note: MTLH p. 417 has this as Oct. 30, but this citation is more recent.)