December 4 Tuesday – Sam wrote from San Francisco to Isabella A. Cotton, one of his companions on the Smyrniote sailing ship from Hawaii, about his plans to leave on the “Opposition” steamer on Dec. 15. He forgot to enclose a picture of himself, and so sent a second note [MTL 1: 371-2].
Sam also wrote his mother, Jane Lampton Clemens, and family. Sam wrote he was:
…thick & thieves with the Rev. Stebbings, & I am laying for the Rev. Scudder & the Rev. Dr. Stone. I am running on preachers, now altogether. I find them gay. Stebbings is a regular brick. I am taking letters of introduction to Henry Ward Beecher, Rev. Dr. Tyng, & other eminent parsons in the east. Whenever anybody offers me a letter to a preacher now, I snaffle it on the spot. I shall make Rev. Dr Bellows trot out the fast nags of the cloth for me when I get to New York [MTL 1: 368]. Note: Rev. Henry Whitney Bellows (1814-1882); Rev. Barton Warren Stone (1772-1844). That expression “fast nags of the cloth” would become well known.