January 6? Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to John M. Hay about a poem Hay had written: Paraphrased: “On the first appearance of ‘J.B.,’ Mark Twain wrote to me, saying that I was all wrong making him an engineer,—that only a pilot could have done what I represented him as doing” [MTL 4: 299]. Note: Hays’ poem “Jim Bludso, (of the Prairie Belle.)” —about the engineer of a burning steamboat who dies while keeping his vow to “ ‘hold her nozzle agin the bank / Till the last galoot’s ashore.’ ”—appeared in the New York Tribune on Jan. 5; see Hay’s Jan. 9 reply.

January 6 or 7 Saturday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Earl D. Berry, asking for articles for the Buffalo Express on a charity for orphaned children of dead Union soldiers [MTL 4: 300].