November 19 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, thanking him for the “lovely book” and promising in December to send him “one that hasn’t much poetry in it, but pictures enough to make up” [MTP]. Gribben labels this as “an advance copy” of Wyndam Towers, since “Aldrich published no other volumes during this period” [18].

Sam also wrote again to Joe Goodman, apologizing if his telegram had caused embarrassment to any negotiations, but hoped it reached him before he’d offered Senator Jones royalty shares. This shouldn’t be done to millionaires, but other folks like Alexander Badlam (see Feb. 9, 1889 on Badlam). The rest of the longish letter was all dollar signs, and calculations of the number of machines they’d sell in New York City alone. Sam was thinking and talking in the millions of dollars, and was already counting orders for a machine that would ultimately let him down [MTP].

Sam also wrote a curious account of problems ordering a carriage for “Miss F.” to bring her to his house, then later to take her to the station. The letter is labeled to Unidentified by MTP. Sam ended the “memorandum” with the directive “Please bring suit for your bill. (This memorandum was written down at 10.25 p.m., Nov. 19/89” [MTP]. Who was Miss F? Since 1876 Woolley’s Livery Stable was Sam’s usual Hartford supplier of hacks and carriages, so this letter may have been written for them. To further muddy the waters, Sam’s notebook carries an entry mentioning a Miss Reardon, a Mrs. F.:

An hour later than the order a carriage arrived & Miss Reardon went up — Mrs. F. said she had ordered none. / Nov. 19 ‘/89, 10.25, p.m. To Mr. Lewis: Tele at 6.30 for carriage to [3: 534].

Dean Sage wrote to Sam after having visited Hartford around Nov. 6 to inspect the Paige typesetter. Sage was skeptical, and also prescient — he warned that putting out two million dollars to setup a typesetter factory before any machines were manufactured was too great a risk, and suggested that the first few hundred units be subcontracted out to machine shops.

You have either got a great bonanza or nothing, & until you have a good number of the machines actually turning out successfully the work they are expected to do this is a question…. To tell the truth I feel anxious about you — as I understand it, you are the man who will have to furnish the capital, so large in amount that a failure in the business might sweep away all you have, or seriously embarrass you [MTNJ 3: 527n144].

T.B. Persse wrote from 41 Captil Ave (City not specified) to Sam soliciting sale of “2 Handsome Farms…” Sam wrote on the letter, “Don’t know what it is, Brer W., but don’t want it anyway” [MTP].