End of July – Relating to the diaries of Methuselah and Shem, which were part of a larger project Sam conceived in the late 1860s is this passage in his notebook:
“Conversation between the carpenters of Noah’s Ark, laughing at him for an old visionary—his money as good as anybody’s though going to bust himself on this crazy enterprise” [MTNJ 1: 147}.
Notes: The passage stands alone; it is evidence to the beginnings of Sam’s attempts to rewrite the Bible on his own terms, attempts that culminated in such works as “Captain Stormfield,” “Letters from the Earth,” and “What is Man?” The age Sam lived in, due to great scientific and technological advances, was one of conflict between science and Christian Biblical belief. Sam was a product of that age and was troubled by what he saw as fallacies in Scripture, though ironically he was influenced more by the Bible than any other book.