January 29 Wednesday – In a letter to the Hartford Courant aimed at raising funds for Father Hawley’s efforts, and dated Jan. 28, Sam wrote that charity is:

…a dignified and respectworthy thing, and there is small merit about it and less grace when it don’t cost anything. We would like to have a thousand dollars in the house; we point to the snow and the thermometer; we call Hartford by name, and we are not much afraid but that she will step to the front and answer for herself…. I am thoroughly and cheerfully willing to lecture here for such an object, though I would have serious objections to talking in my own town for the benefit of my own pocket—we freebooters of the platform consider it more graceful to fly the black flag in strange waters and prey upon remote and friendless communities [MTL 5: 289].