August 9 Monday – Sam wrote to the editors of the River Record about articles they’d referred to which he intended to publish in book form after visiting the Mississippi again. These would become Life on the Mississippi. Sam realized that since he’d left the river, new boats had come and gone. “Yours is a very good paper,” he wrote, “but it makes a person baldheaded to read it” [MTLE 5: 140].

Sam also wrote to Howells [MTLE 5: 141], thanking him for the hair-restorer sent by Elinor Howells to Livy, whose naturally fine hair had thinned during pregnancy [Willis 134]. “The baby was born well fixed on top,” Sam added. He’d decided it wasn’t bad to be copied by papers like the New York Times.

..it keeps a body more alive & known to the broad & general public, for the Atlantic goes to only (dam that ‘Boston Girl’) the select high few….I never really expected you to print that article [“Boston Girl” in the June issue of Atlantic ]; so when I came to, after you accepted it, I said to myself, “All right, if he wants all the pious people after his scalp, let him go ahead—it will be a spectacle not without interest.”…By-the-way, these praiseful letters have usually come from strong church members—think of that!—& they take me to be one—think also of that! Blame it, they are the very people I expected to make skip around & cuss [MTLE 5: 141].

Sam added that the girls adored the new baby, that he’d written some 60 pages of “burlesque foreign travel,” and that Bliss had sent him a check for the first quarter sales of A Tramp Abroad—“nearly $19,000–very good” [141].