October 3 Monday – William Mackay Laffan wrote to Sam about the Dec. 7, 1886 investment in International Telegraph and Cable Co. 

…as to the great cable invention…let me explain to you in person, when I see you next, what a Goddamned humiliating and degrading fizzle it proved to be…and how the first of experts are the cream of asses, and how I am now fully trying to get the money back [MTNJ 3: 262n117].

Laffan also reported what a spokesman for the Mergenthaler Linotype Co. had boasted of in a letter — that their machines were now ready to go and twelve were in the New York Tribune. Laffan also sent Sam a long article from the Albany Journal about a McMillan typesetting machine in use on that newspaper. Laffan also asked when Webster could “talk figures on that Baltimore book” (the art book of William Thompson Walters) [MTNJ 3: 333n96; 337n108&7]. Laffan shared his intention “to go away Pariswards and take a week or two with the French etchers” [339n119].

Frederick J. Hall for Webster & Co. wrote to Sam that the firm had rejected a cookbook by Flora Haines Longhead [MTLTP 236n1]. Hall also reported on a late financial statement: “We hoped to send you the full account to-day but our book-keeper says it will not be ready until tomorrow” [MTNJ 3: 31n88].