January 23 Friday – Sam wrote from St. Paul to Livy, who’d asked if Pond ever failed to mail his letters. Sam didn’t think so and told the story of Orion taking one of his letters to the post box and when he got there forgetting why he’d gone, returning with the letter still in his pocket. Sam also related walking nine blocks to see the “ghost,” a “mysterious something on a school-house window pane,” which various people saw as various objects or persons.

If all the fools in the world should die, lordy God how lonely I should be.

Sam told of meeting old printer pals:

In Quincy I saw—well, first it was an old man with bushy gray whiskers down to his breast, & farmer-like clothes on. When I saw him last, 35 years ago, he was a dandy, with plug hat tipped far forward & resting almost on his very nose; dark red, greasy hair, long, & rolled under at the bottom, down on his neck; red goatee; a most mincing, self-conceited gait—the most astonishing gait that ever I saw—a gait possible nowhere on earth but in our South & in that old day; & when his hat was off, a red roll of hair, a recumbent curl, was exposed (between two exact partings) which extended from his forehead rearward over the curve of his skull, & you could look into it as you would into a tunnel. But now—well, see Holmes’s “the Last Leaf” for what he is not.

And there also I saw Wales McCormick, the giant printer-cub of 35 years ago—he & I were apprentices & the above dude, Pet McMurry, was the journeyman [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Susy Clemens, glad that she and “Daisy had such a good time over Huck Finn” [MTP]. Note: Margaret Warner (“Daisy”) was the daughter of George and Lilly Warner and a few months older than Susy.

Sam also wrote to Kingsland Smith of the St. Paul Roller Mill Co. that he wouldn’t be able to see friends in St. Paul on this trip, that the “railroad has fagged me out & I must like here & sleep & rest till lecture time this evening.” Sam invited him to come behind the curtain and see him in the evening [MTP].

Sam also wrote three notes to Charles Webster. The first note directed him to send unbound copies of Huck Finn to “the prominent journals & magazines of the country.” The second questioned Pond’s accounts and the royalties offered Osgood on the Library of Humor; the third seems to be a response to Webster’s (telegram?) about Pond’s accounts and several other matters discussed before—the weekly report Sam wanted, the Bromfield-Rice matter for the North American Review, the bed clamp and a dividend from Western Union stock [MTP]. It is difficult to read all these letters to Webster without feeling sympathy for the man.

Sam and Cable gave a reading at the Market Hall, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Charles Webster wrote various business matters; a second letter of financial needs [MTP].