January 8 Saturday – At midnight in the Troy House, Troy, New York, Sam wrote to Livy. He wrote her a second letter later in the day. His second letter marveled at the insignificance of the earth in the universe and of man. “Does one apple in a vast orchard think as much of itself as we do?” Sam was reading “The Early History of Man” in Eclectic Magazine for Jan. 1870 [MTL 4: 12].

Sam also wrote his agent, James Redpath, of “one-horse” towns, bills, and the like.

“Cohoes was another infernal no-season-ticket concern—paid me in 7,000 ten-cent shin-plasters, so that my freight cost more back to Albany than my passage did” [MTL 4: 10].

“Around the World Letter No. 6,” sub-titled “Early Days in Nevada, Silver Land Nabobs” was printed in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 130].