December 28 Monday – The Virginia City Evening Bulletin quoted Sam’s article in the Enterprise: “Report of Artemus Ward’s Lecture in Virginia City.” The Enterprise article probably ran a day or two before Dec. 28:
There are perhaps fifty subjects treated in it, and there is a passable point in every one of them, and a healthy laugh, also, for any of God’s creatures who hath committed no crime, the ghastly memory of which debars him from smiling again while he lives. The man who is capable of listening to the “Babes in the Wood” from beginning to end without laughing either inwardly or outwardly must have done murder, or at least meditated it, at some time during his life [Mack 296].