October 19 and 20 Friday – Sam wrote from San Francisco to Orion and Mollie. This is a much quoted letter of Sam’s:
…I have had a ‘call’ to literature, of a low order—i.e., humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit…But as I was saying, it is human nature to yearn to be what we were never intended for. It is singular, but it is so. I wanted to be a pilot or a preacher, & I was about as well calculated for either as is poor Emperor Norton for Chief Justice of the United States [MTL 1: 322-3 emphasis Sam’s]. Sam began to see the possibilities of authorship, and probably enjoyed the writing of the frog tale and the finished work. The instant success a month later of the Jumping Frog story would cement his realizations. See Branch’s 1967 article “My Voice is Still for Setchell,” listed in Works Cited.