January 22 Thursday – Sam and Cable gave a reading in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

Sam wrote from St. Paul, Minn. to Charles Erskine Scott Wood, his old West Point friend, who evidently had asked Sam why he never poked fun at Jews.

I have never felt a disposition to satirize the Jews. I have no reason to offer for I think it is a matter of feeling not a conscious intellectual impulse. Hang it, what I am trying to say is, that I have never had the disposition….But the intellectual origin of the disposition lies mainly in two facts, I think; (and they long ago deeply impressed me) that I have never seen a Jew begging his bread; and have never seen one procuring it by Manual labor. The one fact must mean that the Jews take care of their unfortunates with a fidelity known to no other race; and the other fact must mean that the Jews are the only race with whom brains are a universal heritage (by contrast consider the Irish race.) We do not satirize people we singularly respect—one would do it but indifferently well, and be ashamed of it when it was done. Twenty years ago I knew Adolph Sutro well (of Sutro Tunnel)—a fine, manly beautiful character; and I have always found something of Sutro is a sufficient equipment for an average man. No, I never knew Ben Holiday—I only knew of him [MTP]. Note: See also Feb. 5 from Morris W. Fechheimer.