April 7 Sunday – Sam arrived in Elmira at 3 AM [MTLE 3: 43]. Later that day he finished the Mar. 29 letter to Denis McCarthy; Sam wrote he’d been in NY the day before, where he’d heard the “common talk in Virginia [City] that I had persuaded Dan [De Quille] to adopt a plan in the writing of his book which I knew would kill it!” Sam responded that once such a claim might have upset him, but since he knew it wasn’t so and Dan wouldn’t say such a thing, it didn’t upset him; all he’d advised was to cut down a bit of the opening history [MTLE 3: 39-40].

He also wrote to his mother, Jane Clemens, and sister, Pamela Moffett, relating that he’d told Livy about his visit to the family in Fredonia [MTLE 3: 42-3].