December 10 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Washington to his mother and family about political prospects and about Mrs. Fairbanks.

She was the most refined, intelligent, & cultivated lady in the ship, & altogether the kindest & best. She sewed my buttons on, kept my clothes in presentable trim, fed me on Egyptian jam (when I behaved,) lectured me awfully on the quarter-deck on moonlit promenading evenings, & cured me of several bad habits. …We all called her “mother” & kept her in hot water all the time about her brood. I always abused the sea-sick people—I said nobody but almighty mean people ever got sea-sick—& she thought I was in earnest. She never got sick herself. She always drummed us up for prayer meeting, with her monitory, ‘Seven bells, my boys—you know what it is time for.” We always went, but we liked four bells best, because it meant hash—dinner, I should say [MTL 2: 130].

Sam wrote the Alta of his conversations with General Edward McCook on support of the Hawaii treaty [MTL 2: 138n3].