December 20 Saturday – Sam was becoming incensed at the endless delays and tinkering done on the typesetter by James W. Paige and his assistant Charles Ethan Davis. Sam’s notebook:

Dec. 20/90. About 3 weeks ago, the machine was pronounced “finished,” by Paige, for certainly the half dozenth time in the past twelvemonth. Then it transpired — I mean it was discovered — that North had failed to inspect the period, & it sometimes refused to perform properly. But to correct that error would take just one day & only one day — the “merest trifle in the world.” I said this sort of mere trifle had interfered often before & had always cost ten times as much time & money as their loose calculations promised. P.& Davis knew (they always “know,” never guess) that this correction would cost but one single day. Well, the best part of 2 weeks went by. I dropped in (last Monday noon) & they were still tinkering. Still tinkering, but just one hour, now, would see the machine at work, blemishless, & never stop again for a generation: the hoary old song that has been sung to weariness in my ears by these frauds & liars! Four days & a half elapsed, & still that “one hour’s” work was still going on, & another hour’s work still to be done. I have not heard how things stand, to-day. I wish they would get down to where one minute’s work would make a finish. In that case we should see the end, certainly, in, say, 15 years [3: 596].

J.A. Ekberg, an unemployed artist, wrote from Troy, N.Y. to Sam — this a follow up letter to his Dec. 8. Ekberg had not heard from Sam so wrote again asking for “a few lines”; he drew his portrait in pencil on the inside pane of the letter [MTP].

Roderick F. Farrell, N.Y. attorney, “broken in fortune” wrote to Sam for a loan. He mentioned IA and the Quaker City in 1867 (Farrell was not among those passengers or crew). He attached a five-inch news clipping about himself that revealed had been US Consul at Cadiz, Spain in 1868 [MTP].