January 1 Friday – On New Year’s Day, Sam wrote in the Territorial Enterprise:

“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath” [Fatout, MT Speaks 10-11].

Charles F. Browne (Artemus Ward) wrote from Austin, Nev. to Sam

My Dearest Love,—I arrived here yesterday a.m. at 2 o’clock. It is a wild, untamable place, but full of lion-hearted boys. I speak to-night. See small bills.

Why did you not go with me and save me that night?—I mean the night I left you drunk at that dinner party. I went and got drunker, beating, I may say, Alexander the Great, in his most drinkingest days, & I blackened my face at the Melodeon, and made a gibbering, idiotic speech. God-damit! I suppose the Union will have it. But let it go. I shall always remember Virginia [city] as a bright spot in my existence as all others must or rather cannot be, as it were.

Love to Jo. Goodman and Dan. I shall write soon, a powerfully convincing note to my friends of “The Mercury.” Your notice, by the way, did much good here, as it doubtlessly will elsewhere. The miscreants of the Union will be batted in the snout if they ever dare pollute this rapidly rising city with their loathsome presence.

Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by liquor.

Do not, sir—do not flatter yourself that you are the only chastely-humorous writer onto the Pacific slopes.

Good-bye, old boy—and God bless you! The matter of which I spoke to you so earnestly shall be just as earnestly attended to—and again with very many warm regards for Jo. and Dan., and regards to many of the good friends we met. I am Faithfully, gratefully yours…[MTLP 93-94]. Note: The Union newspaper in Va. City; The NY Sunday Mercury, to which Ward had urged Sam to contribute. See Ward’s second letter of Jan. 21.