January 19 Tuesday – Phineas T. Barnum wrote to Sam. In part…

My dear Clemens / Yours recd I hope I sent you the letter from the man who was going on a lecturing tower!

I have heretofore destroyed a multitude of queer letters but henceforth will save them all for you.

I wonder if you have ever seen my great Hippodrome. If not I really hope you will have a chance to do so during the week or two that it will remain open. I enclose several “orders” to that end.

I’ll not disguise that I have a small axe or hatchet to grind—though if you take hold of it, it would soon swell to an immense tree-chopping implement. But if you dont happen to take to it, understand I shall be quite content—I merely throw out the hint as one “casts his bread upon the waters”—if it dont “return” I’ll be just as well off as if I had not tried for a small harvest.

Your comet article in the Herald last year wherein you had me for an active partner of course added much to my notoriety at home and abroad—now my “axe” is that if you should happen to be in a writing mood and could in your inimitable way hit my travelling Hippodrome so that people could get an idea what is coming next spring & summer, it would help me, but I neither ask nor expect nor desire such a thing unless it so happens that in the way of your literary labors you can make the Hippodrome the subject of a portion of your article. Such an article in Harpers Weekly would be immense and of course proportionately so in any other publication. My object is to reach country readers where my Hippodrome will travel next summer. If you cant bring it into your regular work—I shall be very glad to pay you the same as you would want from any publisher & I’ll have the article inserted in some paper & then mail marked copies of it to every paper in the Union. You cant well get a good idea of Hippodrome without seeing it—but I’ll herein sketch a little about it [MTPO]. Note: Barnum further disclosed his costs and acts. Sam replied on Feb. 3.

January 19 and 25 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Jerome B. Stillson, New York World editor, that Kate Field, now playing opposite John T. Raymond in the role of Laura Hawkins, was an “inveterate sham,” that he had not seen Field’s performance and that she had “considerably improved & strengthened” his complimentary remark since he:

“…uttered it. I do not mind being quoted in full, but I must protest against cutting down of my words which makes me seem to say a very great deal more than I did say, or had any moral right to say” [MTL 6: 354-5]. Note: Sam’s letter was not printed in the World, and Stillson may not have still been with the paper