June 27 Thursday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam replied to Abbott Handerson Thayer’s June 18:

Your hearty praises give me very great pleasure, & I thank you for speaking them out. When one is treading on an unpopular road it is a mighty help & refreshment to know that there are those whose hearts are with him.

Oh, but we are a spectacle! Such rich assets gone to pot—in Cuba, in Porto Rico, in the Phillipines [sic], in the White House, in the Supreme Court, in the pulpit, in the Constitution & the Declaration, in China where our missionaries are confessed revenge-hunters & highwaymen. Of every possession which was valuable— morals, principles, the spirit of liberty; & national pride in these things—we are stripped to the shirt-tail. But—we’ve got McKinley, to worship & Furston to admire! let us not despair. Why, we are just a sarcasm.

We remember the Hartford visit well, & were speaking of it a fortnight ago, with a young artist who came to black-&-white us for the Century. Mrs. Clemens joins me in kindest regards to you. / Sincerely Yours, / SL. Clemens [Smithsonian Archives of American Art Online; Thayer Family Papers]. Note: Sam was reminded of Thayer’s 1882 visit to draw his portrait for the Century; see Feb. 24, 1882 entry and others in Vol. I.