November 4 Thursday – “Conubial Bliss,” another unsigned sketch of Sam’s about a rowdy Irishman on “Holliday’s Hill” appeared in the Hannibal Journal [ET&S 1: 85]: 

A squalid family living on the side of Holliday’s Hill is under the ‘protection’ of a big fellow who once in a while, say about every afternoon, gets drunk and ‘cuts up’ considerably. Sometimes he gathers the baby and goes staggering and stumbling and pitching about over the hill, to the great dismay of his wife. Having amused himself in this manner till tired, he lays down the child, and ‘lams’ its mama; and if the unwashed, tow-headed boarder, who stands by with his hands in his pockets, offers to interfere he ‘lams’ him too. Within a few days past, his amusements of this sort have been charmingly varied:—such as taking sheets and dresses from the clothes line, and tearing them into ribbons; smashing up the cooking stove, throwing a brick at his wife’s head, and chasing her around the house with a ten foot pole. Quite a contrast, doubtless the poor woman thinks, when her mind wanders back to the courtship and the ‘honey-moon!’ Well, we are all subject to change—except printers; they never have any spare change [ET&S 1: 86].