July 12 Friday – In Hartford, at the family home, Sam wrote to Livy still in Elmira;

It is lovely & cool & nice & twilighty & still, here in the home after breakfast; & I can see the dog-house down the slope, & past its roof a burnished square or two of river with rich foliage-reflections in it; & this way a little, by the dog-house, is a grassy swale, the half of which is deeply shaded & the other half glares with the sun; & at my right — among some ferns to the right of the tree that has Sue’s old squirrel-boot nailed to it, — is the peaceful picture of Satan & her child, blinking up devout & drowsy, praising God for the weather.

Sam then told of a 22 year old Irish cook of the neighbors dying unaccountably in the night, a somber end to a somber letter [LLMT 251-2]. Note: Satan was a black female cat; her kitten named Sin.

Sam also wrote to Richard Malcolm Johnston who had written on July 4:

I am here for a few days all by myself, & the tribe are on top of the hill near Elmira all by their selves — & both of us find it lonesome. I shall hollers first — & start for Elmira next week.

When I left Elmira a few days ago, Jean was scouring the woodland roads like an Injun — on her horse, bareback. The other two girls were taking 4-hour gallops under guard of the old coachman; everybody was having a good time except Mrs. Clemens, who acquired pink-eye the middle of last February & has had no use of her eyes for these 5 months [MTP].

Evidently Johnston had written of George Francis Train (1829-1904) businessman, author and eccentric, because Sam related hearing “17 or 18 years ago,” when he was lecturing that Mark Twain had been thrown in jail, when actually it was Train who’d been incarcerated in Ireland.

Sam also wrote a short paragraph to George P. Lathrop, the organizer of the Mar. 31, 1887 Longfellow Memorial in Boston where Sam read. Lathrop had written suggesting a proposition for a game he wanted Webster & Co. to publish (see July 17, #1 to Livy). Sam answered that in their new system,

Mr. Hall considers all propositions; after he has arrived at a decision, they are submitted to me, but until that time I have no voice [MTP].

Henry Romeike’s Press Cuttings, Co. wrote soliciting Sam’s business, claiming “1,900 subscribers to whom 29,000 cuttings were mailed last week.” [MTP].