January 9 Monday – John M. Hay wrote from the Astor House in NYC to Sam; the letter was sent with another of Jan. 14.

“My Dear Mr Clemens / I owe you many thanks for your kind letter. I think the pilot is a much more appropriate and picturesque personage and should certainly have used him except for the fact that I knew Jim Bludso and he was an engineer and did just what I said…” [MTL 4: 299]. Note: see the rest of the letter in source.

January 9 or 10 Tuesday – Sam left Buffalo and traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, possibly with Dan Slote and Charley Langdon, for the wedding of Mary Mason Fairbanks’ daughter, Alice to William H. Gaylord (b. 1832).