August – Sometime during the month at Quarry Farm, Sam began “A Record of the Small Foolishnesses of Susie & ‘Bay’ Clemens (Infants)”. The document would grow for nine years [MTNJ 2: 365n32]. (See July 1880 entry.)

“Political Views of a Humorist” ran in the New York Herald. In it Sam wrote of Charles Francis Adams (1807-1886) as “a pure man, a proved statesman” [Gribben 8]. Adams was a past Congressman from Mass. (1859-61), and minister to England (1861-68); the grandson of John Adams, son of John Quincy Adams.