February 3 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam received a visit by Professor Francis Wayland (1826-1904), dean of the law school at Yale. In a letter to Julia D. Grant (Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant) Sam quoted Wayland about the Grant Memoirs:

“It is great & fine literature, & deeply fascinating; I read it aloud to my wife, & we were like children with candy — saving it up, & isterine it, & making it last as long as possible, & full of regret when it was all gone.”

Minutes after Wayland left, Sam wrote Mrs. Grant. He added, “Pity the General did not live to hear some of these things.” He also confirmed that certain trophies she was concerned about were safe at the U.S. Treasury. He had confirmed it at General John A. Logan’s while in Washington. [MTP]. Note: Wayland was the son of a famous father by the same name, clergyman and educator Francis Wayland (1796-1865), and overseer of the first graduate law course in America.

Anna Hoit Bumstead of Atlanta, Ga. Wrote to Sam proposing a fund for the widow of Edmund Asa Ware, clergyman and founder of Atlanta University, who died in 1885. Sam wrote on the envelope “Sent $25 & promised to send the same sum every year, if reminded annually” [MTP].