January 15 Sunday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to the Editor of Every Saturday, Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907), setting him straight that the poem “Three Aces” run in the Express Dec. 3, 1870 over the byline “Carl Byng was not Twain’s. Aldrich complained in the Jan. 7 issue that the poem “seems to be a feeble echo of Bret Harte” (wildly popular “Heathen Chinee”). Every Saturday was a Boston weekly owned by James R. Osgood. “I am not in the imitation business,” wrote Sam, claiming the Carl Byng writer “for years signed himself as ‘Hy. Slocum.’” Aldrich printed Sam’s letter without the dateline in the Feb. 4 issue [MTL 4: 304; Powers, MT A Life 293-4]. Sam would not meet Aldrich until late in 1871.