February – An agreement was reached with James W. Paige and William J. Hamersley stimulated by their Jan. 20 meeting with Sam in Elmira. Sam would undertake additional capitalization input in exchange for half ownership in the Paige typesetter. Kaplan writes:

“Two weeks later [from Jan. 20], he formally took over the new venture and hoisted all the gaudy banners of his expectations. If money was needed, he reminded himself, Andrew Carnegie was the man; he planned to see Thomas Edison. Bigger schemes of capitalization filled his head: by autumn he was thinking of a $5,000,000 stock issue; the next year, as his hopes and needs grew, it became $10,000,000” [286-7].

Longman’s Magazine p.445-6 carrried “a conventional ode honoring Mark Twain on his 50th birthday” [Tenney 16]. This was a brief conventional piece; a head note praises HF and Sam’s Western writing, but complains that “when he gets among pictures and holy places perhaps we all feel that he is rather an awful being” [Tenney, ALR supplement to the Reference Guide (Autumn 1979) 182].

The February issue of The Century Magazine carried a long article of “Open Letter” under the feature “Topics of the Time,” which included a full column-long letter by Mark Twain. Sam concluded:

We do get cheap books through the absence of International Copyright; and any who will consider the matter thoughtfully will arrive at the conclusion that these cheap books are the costliest purchase that ever a nation made. / Mark Twain.