Submitted by scott on

October,  late – In Cincinnati Sam found employment as a typesetter for T.  Wrightson and Co., one of the city’s  leading printers. He worked there into the next spring, some six months [MTL 1: 70]. Sam’s time in Cincinnati is  one of the “least documented of his life…” [MT Encyclopedia, Poole 145] but  he did write two more Snodgrass letters while there. Sam lived in a  boarding house. Long hours at work plus discussions with other boarders didn’t  allow Sam much time for writing. In a chapter entitled “A Scotchman Named Macfarlane,” Paine writes of a “long, lank, unsmiling Scotchman” [MTB 114-15] who Sam supposedly  spent many evenings with that winter. Macfarlane’s ideas paralleled many of  Sam’s later misogynistic and controversial views, such as those expressed in What  is Man? in 1906 [MTB 114-5].  Some  researchers have theorized that Macfarlane was an invention of Sam’s, a “mask  that he wore to express many of his more controversial ideas” [MT  Encyclopedia, Poole 146].  Baker posits that Sam  may have recalled Macfarlane as “McFarland,” a typesetter who also worked at  Wrightson’s from 1855-60 and lived at different boarding houses each year [Baker 303]. Note: see young Henry  Macfarlane, Late-Mar.  1866—could this be the same person?

Day By Day Acknowledgment

Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.   

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