August 29 Thursday – Francis Dalzell Finlay wrote from Pitcher Creek, Texas to Sam:

My dear Clements [sic], You may be aware that when the celebrated American humourist, Mark Twain, is in the preliminary throes of composition, he takes off all his clothes, and sits stark-naked in the middle of his library floor, and in these conditions constructs those delightful works which are the joy of the present, and will be the pride of the future, generations, of the cultivated classes, of all civilized, & uncivilized, communities. It is under analogous conditions that I reply to yours of Aug 17, and yr. Telephoned-telegram of same date, both forwarded on by my daughter, and received here, in the boundless perorar. Except in a Turkish Bath, I have never been so hot….suffice it that the kind — nay, most kind — proposal of the 11th & 12th Oct. seems to me to be exactly convenient, and therefore most agreeable; and that unless earthquakes of some kind, or conviction of sin, or impecuniosity in an unexperienced form, should intervene, my girl and I will be Most Delighted to accept your hospitality of the aforesaid date.” Sam wrote on the envelope, “Finlay accepts” [MTP].