March 19 Saturday – Susy Clemens’ fifteenth birthday. Sam inscribed two of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s books (under pseudonym “Christopher Crowfield”): The Chimney Corner, and Oldtown Folks to: Susie Clemens, Mch. 19, 1887 [Gribben 670]. Daisy Warner wrote her father about Susy’s birthday party:

Susy Clemens was fifteen years old yesterday and she had a lovely part. The two Twichell girls, Mary and Hattie Foote, Cousin Lilly, Ward Foote, Hattie Whitmore, and Fannie Freese, and Lucy Drake, and I were all there to supper. Mrs. Clemens had her beautiful big, round dinner table, and at each place was a lovely bunch of beautiful roses. Three or four at each place, and we all put them on. And, also, at each place was a lovely little glass dish of candy, tied around with pretty ribbons, and a little Japanese card with our name on it, on the top of the dish. In the middle of the table, was a kind of pyramid of nasturtiums and then there were other vases, of roses. And those tall silver candles were on the table too, and the whole thing was SO LOVELY. I wish that you could have seen it. We had soup, then turkey, and with it some little potato-cakes and jelly — Then salad, and then straw-berries and ice-cream, and cakes (lady-fingers etc.) and then the big birthdaycake was brought on, with fifteen lighted candles. It was VERY pretty. Of course we all had some of it; and then we had fruit and candy. After supper we danced and had charades and Mr. Clemens read some “Uncle Remus” to us, and Mama and Frank, and Aunt Lottie, came in after supper. And altogether we had a DELIGHTFUL time [Salsbury 240].

In Hartford Sam wrote to Charles Webster, enclosing George Warner’s recommendation of J. Henry Barton for the vacant cashier-bookkeeper position at Webster & Co. Sam wrote on the bottom of Warner’s letter:

Charley, this is an absolutely honest man, at any rate, & Charley Langdon, in whose employ he is, at Peale, Pa., can tell you the rest — for I don’t know [MTP].

George H. Warner wrote: “been through the embezzlement question myself, and feel qualified to send you sympathy.” He recommended J. Henry Barton of Peale, Penn. to examine the books. Sam likely forwarded this to Charles Webster, for he wrote on the bottom of Warner’s letter, “Charley, this is an absolutely honest man,at any rate, & Charley Langdon, in whose employ he is, at Peale, Pa., can tell you the rest — for I don’t know / SLC” [MTP].