December 2 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to his sister, Pamela Moffett, who was in California visiting her son, Samuel Moffett.
I have sent the books to you, care of Sam….I am glad your health is so much improved, but in no way surprised, for a change of air and scene invigorates infallibly all but the dead and livens them up, too, I suppose, if they land in the wrong end of the here-after. I hope so at any rate, for a number of persons in whom I am interested have traveled that way this year. My old friend Joe Goodman’s post-office address is Fresno City, Cal. He is grape farming in a small way. It may be that he is a neighbor of Sam’s. If so, Sam should hunt him up and cultivate him, for he is a rare man in many ways, intellectual among others, and that is a quality which Sam will find sufficiently scarce where he has located himself.
All the family are well and send love and Christmas greetings. The White Elephant is my last book. [MTBus 205].
Sam also wrote to Helen M. Cox (“Miss Nellie”) niece to George W. Cable. Helen’s mother had done a painting Sam called “Mammy,” sent by Cable and referred to by Sam in an Oct. 12 letter to Cable. Sam also thanked her for a New Orleans directory. He opened with a lesson on the “tough English language”:
I have dictated 36 letters this morning, & made from two to half a dozen mistakes in every one of them; and here you rebuke me with a two-page letter with only a single error in it! Years ago, a man captured me on this little error of yours, & now I get my revenge. This man said to me: “Coats are hung—on nails; cats are hung—on clothes lines; birds and fishes are hung—in the meat closet; a dead man is hung—where you please; but a living human being is the only detail of creation that is never hung, but always hanged” [MTP].
Sam also typed a long to Edward House about the difficulties he was having with LM, Republican vs. Democrat politics, and family matters. What Sam wrote one day he’d tear up the next, a case of “literary gout” he called it. He was encouraged by the people’s ability to “go straight for it, over-riding every thing in the nature of leadership” when it came to bossism. Sam loved the wondrous things his daughters said:
…CLARA [AGE 8], AT BREAKFAST YESTERDAY MORNING. LIVY AND MRS. LANGDON WERE TALKING ABOUT A TELEGRAM IN THE PAPER, WHICH DESCRIBED HOW A YOUNG GIRL HAD LOST HER LIFE ON THE STAGE OF CINCINNATI THE NIGHT BEFORE. SHE WAS PLAYING WILLIAM TELL’S SON WITH THE APPLE ON HER HEAD…AND THE ACTOR WHO TRIED TO SHOOT THE APPLE WITH THE RIFLE SENT HIS BULLET THROUGH HER BRAIN INSTEAD….THEN THE HORROR AND FRIGHT OF THE VAST AUDIENCE WAS DESCRIBED, WITH THEIR SHRIEKS, AND THE FAINTING OF WOMEN. CLARA’S THOUGHT WAS PLAINLY WITH THAT POOR ACTOR, THE CENTER OF THE CONVULSION. SHE REFLECTED A MOMENT, AND THEN SAID WITH CAST-IRON GRAVITY, “I SHOULD THINK HE WOULD HAVE BEEN EMBARRASSED.” SHE WAS MORTALLY EMBARRASSED HERSELF WHEN SHE DISCOVERED BY THE OUT-BURST OF LAUGHTER THAT HER WORD DID NOT MEAN WHAT SHE HAS SUPPOSED IT DID [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Lorenz Reich, New York importer who the New York Times called “noted all over the country as the largest importer of the highest grade of Hungarian wine” [Apr. 10, 1887 p.9].
“When doctors disagree” calamity impends. But they seem to have agreed, this time, in a solid body. I am not surprised that they, & Mr. Longfellow, & President Garfield voted as a unit in attestation of the great & unique virtues of your Tokayer Aūsbruch…Ignorance is the enemy of man. I was afraid of the Aūsbruch, until I looked it in the dictionary, for I thought it meant Explosion, & dimly connected with dynamite [MTP].
Sam would later allow a line from this letter to be used as testimonial for the wine, together with a list of well-known men that reads like Who’s Who. Sam’s words: “It heals the word mind as well as the wasted body” [MTP; N.Y. Times, same article].
Joseph R. Hawley sent Sam two forms (no letter) from the American Exchange in Europe [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the bottom of one form, “Feb. 17 ’83 subscribed 500 shares. Paid in 50 per cent ($2,500)”