December 24 Thursday – From New York City, Sam sent best wishes to Joe and Harmony Twichell:

“Livy & I love you both, & fervently wish you a long & happy life, & eventually a sufficient family” [MTP]. Note: The Twichells had NINE children.

Sam also wrote to Francis Wayland, dean of Yale Law School, asking if he knew Warner T. McGuinn (1859-1937), a Negro student there:

      Do you know him? And is he worthy? I do not believe I would very cheerfully help a white student who would ask a benevolence of a stranger, but I do not feel so about the other color. We have ground the manhood out of them, & the shame is ours, not theirs; & we should pay for it.

      If this young man lives as economically as it is the duty & should be the pride of one to do who is straitened, I would like to know what the cost is, so that I may send 6, 12, or 24 months’ board, as the size of the bill may determine.

      You see he refers to you, or I would not venture to intrude.  

Note: Sam met McGuinn briefly during a visit to Yale a few weeks before he wrote to Dean Wayland. I have not pinpointed the date of this meeting; Sam passed through New Haven many times on his trips back and forth to New York City. (See Fishkin 103-4; she gives 1862 as the year of McGuinn’s birth, and states that Sam paid the year and a half remaining in McGuinn’s studies at Yale.)

Also, on or about this day, Sam sent a one-liner to Howells and enclosed a note from Charles H. Clark, thanking him for the offer of final payment for his work on the “Library of Humor,” but was it finished?

“It is all finished, ain’t it? Write & tell him so, Howells” [MTP].

Orion and Mollie Clemens wrote: Mollie: “Nothing but your being here, could give us more pleasure than the word that you expect to come.” Orion: “Bring all of the children and stay all summer. You all and Ma can have the second story” [MTP].

George P. Lathrop wrote enclosing the same notice that Julian Hawthorne sent (see Dec. 23 entry) [MTP].

Douglas Taylor wrote for The Typothetae, Annual Celebration of Franklin’s Birthday. Although he’d rec’d Sam’s decline to dine on Jan. 18, 1886, he still had hopes [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Typothetae – yes”