December 31 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam sent a note to James W. Paige wanting a talk to “help matters” relating to a new contract and the upcoming negotiations with Senator John P. Jones. Sam suggested 2:30 or 3 this afternoon and if William J. Hamersley could come, would Paige let him know [MTP]. Note: Hamersley had been a party in the earlier contracts.

Interestingly, Franklin G. Whitmore also sent the same request for Sam to Paige and Hamersley.

In Indianapolis, Ind., James Whitcomb Riley wrote Sam about his Dec. 29 note on Riley’s Rhymes of Childhood (1890).

Your comment on the Child’s book is the prize gift to me of all this uncommonly considerate Christmas [and Sam’s] own indorsement of the general grade of children and child-character the book so affectionately embraces.

Riley also recalled as a boy typesetter his discovery of Sam’s The Jumping Frog and “his rare fortune of meeting” Sam even for “the briefest two or three times we have glimpsed by each other” [Gribben 581].

James W. Paige wrote two letters to Sam. The first related an accident “Mr. Parker met with … in putting the machine together,” so that Paige had to stay at the office tomorrow, but could “devote time for a talk…at 2.30 P.M. or any time during the afternoon” that Sam could come. The second letter explained that Mr. Hamersley could not be found, and that since his horse was with Steve, who had been sent to find Hamersley, he could not come to Sam’s for the needed talk. Plus the machine was being assembled and he had to supervise “the working of the new lever” which replaced one broken a few days before [MTP].