February 8 Sunday – Sam wrote from Indianapolis to Livy. He blamed Cable for his own supposed shortcomings:

It is Cable’s fault that I have done inferior reading all this time. He has hogged so much of the platform-time that I have always felt obliged to hurry along at lightning speed in order to keep the performance within bounds; but now I take my own time, & give 25 minutes to pieces which formerly occupied but 15.

If this show were new, I would cut a third of him out of the program….I am paying Cable $450 a week & expenses. He isn’t worth a penny over $200. He is not a novelty anywhere…his same old stuff…doesn’t prepare himself with untried matter….He will find a sickly way of making a living [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Charles Webster, excited about the possibility of publishing Grant’s memoirs. Sam reminded that he was reading in Brooklyn Feb. 21 and he wanted to see him at the Everett House that day.

You can bring a Huck Finn in a nice binding, & I will write in it & we will send it to Col. Fred Grant’s eldest little girl.

Sam also suggested sending out 300 press copies early; he suggested Feb. 23, without waiting for the magazines. He ended with the matter of D. Appleton & Co.’s “humiliating swindle” of $300 for their “Artistic Homes.” Sam wanted to know what Webster thought of his plan to order “several hundred dollars’ worth of books” from them and then…

“…tell them to come & cart away the Artistic Homes & pay back my $300 & they can have the other books; or, if they prefer, I will come to New York & be sued for the other books & state my case to the interviewers” [MTP].

Sam also wrote a note to Susy Clemens, quoting from Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.

There isn’t that beautiful? In this book one finds out where Tennyson got the quaint & pretty phrases which he uses in The “Idyls of the king” —“Lightly” & “Wave” & the rest. Yes you must read it when I come sweetheart. Kiss Momma for me; & Ben & Jean / Papa [MTP].