August 17 Tuesday – In Elmira Sam wrote to Frederick J. Hall about the book business. Sam confirmed, “I have written the General” (Philip Sheridan, whose Personal Memoirs Webster & Co. Would publish in 1888) with marketing strengths of Webster & Co. He also asked if Mrs. General Hancock was preparing a book for Webster & Co., and if they had a contract with her [MTLTP 202-3]. Kaplan writes of the many books in the works during this time:

“The list was by and large a mishmash of undistinguished books by or about famous people, frank attempts at celebrity publishing on the pattern of the Grant book: King David Kalakaua’s collection of Hawaiian legends; memoirs by Sherman, Sheridan, and McClellan; The Genesis of the Civil War, by Major General Samuel Wylie Crawford, who was at Sumter when the shooting began; Elizabeth Bacon Custer’s book about General George Armstrong Custer and Almira Hancock’s book about General Winfield Scott Hancock, the hero of Gettysburg; Sunset Cox’s Diversions of a Diplomat in Turkey; and two books which epitomize the firm’s style and fortunes — Father Bernard O’Reilly’s Life of Pope Leo XIII (‘the greatest book of the age,’ Webster and Company trumpeted, written with the Pope’s ‘Encouragement, Approbation, and Blessing’) and Henry Ward Beecher’s Autobiography” [289]. (Editorial emphasis on names.)

Sam also wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore, all about typesetting by hand and Whitmore’s son Will, who was progressing in speed. Sam offered $300 as a bonus for Will to meet certain goals [MTP]. Note: from MTNJ 3: 250n76:

“By training an inexperienced youth to use the typesetter, Clemens probably hoped to prove the claim he made to Edward H. House in a letter of 11 August 1886: ‘Our machine is a mechanical miracle; when a body sees it work, he says “it’s poetry;” & yet it is so simple & sure, that a cross-sweeper can put down his brook & set type on it.’”