January 9 Thursday – Sam’s letters to Whitelaw Reid on the Hawaiian question were published in the New York Tribune [MTL 5: 266].

We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise & beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers & Government defaulters, & show them how amusing it is to arrest them & try them & then turn them loose—some for cash & some for “political influence.” We can make them ashamed of their simple & primitive justice.…We can give them juries composed entirely of the most simple & charming leatherheads. We can give them railway corporations who will buy their Legislatures like old clothes, & run over their best citizens & complain of the corpses for smearing their unpleasant juices on the track. In place of harmless & vaporing Harris, we can give them Tweed…we can furnish them some Jay Goulds who will do away with their old-time notion that stealing is not respectable…We can give them lecturers! I will go myself [MTL 5: 572-3].

Bill paid to James G. Wells & Co. for groceries and glassware, etc. purchased Sept., 12, Oct. 10, 15, Nov. 8, Dec. 14, 19; Bill paid to Hatch & Tyler for 1872 deliveries of coal, Aug. 31, Oct. 7, 23, 25—total $246.00 [MTP].