July 19 Thursday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun. Dana wrote Sam on July 9 and 14.

All right, I’m a candidate, & shall keep myself open to conviction & swag…our tribe will be returning home in September, & then I will look in on you as we pass through. The three summer months being my chief working time, I slave it without losing a day while we are here. I have written one small book, & am far along in a bigger one [HF]—& shall finish if I don’t run around any [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Joe Twichell about the driveway peg game, which took him all day to put in place:

“The reason it took me eight hours was because of little J’s interrupting assistance, I had to measure from the Conquest to the end of Henry VI, three times over…” [Kaplan 252].