April 22 Thursday – Sam went to New York and likely met with Charles Webster and Henry M. Alexander as mentioned in his first letter to Webster on Apr. 20. Sam and Howells split their evening between Hopkinson Smith’s gathering at 7 P.M. and the Author’s Club, Gilsey House, where Sam gave a reading: “Our Children and Great Discoveries” [Fatout, MT Speaking 210-211] Budd in Collected: See a differing summary in “Our New York Letter,” Literary World (Boston), 17 (May 1886) 152; Sam may have spoken twice, once impromptu.

Major General Wesley Merritt for West Point Academy wrote Sam his thanks for his recent visit and talk at the Point, and hoped that Sam’s promise to return in May would not “constitute a patch of pavement for a nameless place” [MTP].