December 27 Thursday – Sam wrote of a raffle for a dead wife’s jewelry (Mar. 15 Alta):
THE FALL OF THE ISAAC DECEMBER 28 th . —Isaac’s upward flight culminated yesterday in a raffle, and now he is fallen! Hobnobbing with the chief officers, and hail fellow well met with everybody yesterday—to-day, degraded to the ranks, and none so poor as to take notice of him. You see he has often excited sympathy by displaying his late wife’s jewelry (he said she died six weeks ago,) and mourning over it. But yesterday he got up that raffle said it grieved him to the heart to have those mementoes of his lost one about him—said her dear jewelry constantly reminded him of happy days he should never again see—and so he gathered it together and raffled it off for three hundred and fifty dollars ! He feels easier after that, no doubt. His lacerated heart will be able to stand it for awhile, now, perhaps [Schmidt].