August 31 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Howells, thanking him “ever so much for reading that batch of the proof.” Sam regretted that he’d not be able to attend the first night of Howells’ opera A Sea-Change in November, due to his readings with Cable that were to begin “about Nov. 5” [MTP; MTHL 2: 500n6]. Howells wrote on Aug. 10 inviting Sam and Livy [MTHL 2: 499]. Sam had plenty to say about current national politics:

This presidential campaign is too delicious for anything. To see grown men, apparently in their right mind, seriously arguing against a bachelor’s fitness for President [Cleveland] because he has had private intercourse with a consenting widow! Those grown men know what the bachelor’s other alternative was—& tacitly they seem to prefer that to the widow. Isn’t human nature the most consummate sham & lie that was ever invented? Isn’t man a creature to be ashamed of in pretty much all his aspects? Is he really fit for anything but to be stood up on the street corner as a convenience for dogs? Man, “know thyself”—& then thou wilt despise thyself, to a dead moral certainty. Take three good specimens—Hawley, Warner, & Charley Clark. Even I do not loathe Blaine more than they do; yet Hawley is howling for Blaine, Warner & Clark are eating their daily crow in the paper for him, & all three will vote for him. O Stultification, where is thy sting, O slave where is thy hickory! [MTP]. (See Sept. 4 entry for Howells’ reply.) Sam also told of the ruin of Gerhardt’s bust of him, but his fresh start in three days of making an even better copy.