March 18 Sunday – Grover Cleveland’s birthday. In a June 5, 1888 letter to Mrs. Cleveland (Frances F. Cleveland) Sam told of this day in Washington:

On a day last March, several authors sat at breakfast at the Arlington hotel. One proposed that we sign a round-robin to the President, couched in proper terms of compliment & courtesy — for it was his birth-day — & accompany it with a bouquet. Then a question arose: might it not be properer to write the note to his wife, & so convey our message to the President though her? The colored waiter had been showing signs of distress all this while; & now he broke ground — to this effect:

“Gentlemen, if you let me mix in, I kin settle dat, kase I’s a ole han’ in dese-yer-gov’ment marters. Now concernin’er dat letter, dey’s etiquette for dat. (No K-sound in that ‘etiquette.’) Yassir, dey’s etiquette for it, an’ you want to go mighty slow an’ don’t make no mistake. Dish-yer’s de rule — de rule of de etiquette: you can’t write no letters to de President wife, an’ you can’t bust no compliments at her — in de fust pusson, you understan’. When you’s a communicatin’ wid de President hisseff, ur whe’r you’s a communicatin’ wid his wife, de rule is, you got to jus’ jumble an’ jumble it arrun’ widout isteri-on which un un you’s arter in partickler; an jis’ , take’n mush-up de compliments all in ‘mongst de words, so’s you knows dey’s dar, but nobody else don’t know it an’ dey don’t stick out nowhers. Yassir, dat’s de way, an’ de onliest way for to write to de White House folks — it relive um fum embarisment.” [MTP].

Sam’s longtime friend, David Gray of Buffalo, editor of the Buffalo Courier (1859-1882) died.

Walton Harrison wrote from Meridian, Miss. Asking Sam to “carefully criticize” his humorous articles which had been laughed at by editors, not readers [MTP].