October 7 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote a long letter of proposition about the Paige typesetter to Joe Goodman. He wrote that he’d come close to writing him several times but the time wasn’t ripe then. “It is ripe, now.” After describing what the compositor would do, Sam placed an offer plainly before Goodman:

I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a week & satisfy yourself, & then go to John P. Jones or to whom you please, & sell me a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of this property, & take ten per cent in cash of the “property” for your trouble — the latter, if you are wise, because the price I ask is a long way short of the value.

What I call “property” is this. A small part of my ownership consists of a royalty of $500 on every machine marketed under the American patents. My selling-terms are, a permanent royalty of one dollar on every American-marketed machine, for a thousand dollars cash to me in hand paid. We shan’t market any fewer than 15,000 machines in 15 years — a return of fifteen thousand dollars for one thousand. A royalty is better than stock, in one way — it must be paid, every six months, rain or shine; it is a debt, & must be paid before dividends are declared. By & by, when we become a stock company I shall buy these royalties back for stock if I can get them for anything like reasonable terms.

I have never borrowed a penny to use on the machine and never sold a penny’s worth of the property until the machine was entirely finished & proven by the severest tests to be what she started out to be — perfect, permanent….

Mrs. Clemens begs Mrs. Goodman to come with you, & asks pardon for not writing the message herself — which would be a pathetically-welcome spectacle to me; for I have been her amanuensis for 8 months, now, since her eyes failed her [MTP].

Note: Sam also described how he’d convinced several newspapers to hold off buying the Mergenthaler compositor; how they’d hired three cub operators to run the Paige and were going to hire three more.

Sam also wrote for Livy to her mother, Olivia Lewis Langdon. There was,

…no news to tell, further than the children have settled down to their studies, the household life has settled down into the old grooves & goes smoothly; & my sister Mrs. Moffett is this evening finishing up a week’s visit & starts west to-morrow [MTP].

Sam added a paragraph about Annie Price and her family’s misfortunes of death and suffering.

Dean Sage wrote to Sam having received his of the 5th and “very glad that success at last seems within the grasp of your machine. As to your kind intention, I shall be obliged to consult with my spouse before saying I can accept it. I am going, with her, to New York on Monday next the 14th will probably return Wednesday.” Sage would try to let him know if he could make it to Hartford [MTP].

Karl Gerhardt wrote to ask Sam to consider building his company (typesetter) on land that Karl purchased in Cottage Grove, a section of Hartford [MTP].