December 14 Friday – C.B. Fleet, druggist, Lynchburg, Va. wrote a humorous anecdote prefaced by the tale that Sam once told of a chairman of a lecture committee, complimenting him on “Heathen Chinee,” one of Bret Harte’s poems. It seems just after a play of Col. Sellers there, a man thought to be intelligent said about the play, “if you’ve seen one Shakespeare play, you’ve seen them all” [MTP].

J. Adelphi Gottlieb for the Medical Corps wrote to Sam that they were forwarding a “diploma of Honary member of the International Sanitary and Public Safety Commission,” and requested his photo, and “such personal data as you may care to send for the Permanent archives” [MTP].