December 6 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Henry B. Barnes, accepting with his original “terms” to speak at the Stationers’ Board of Trade meeting on Feb. 10, 1887 [MTP]. (See Nov. 20 to Barnes.)
Henry M. Stanley spoke at the Methodist Book Concern in New York to clergymen about missionary work in Africa [NY Times, Dec. 7, 1886, p.12 “Answering the Missionaries”].
Franklin G. Whitmore wrote for Sam to S.C. and L.M. Gould to discontinue Notes and Queries with Answers magazine [MTP].
Sam also wrote a short invitation to Dr. Edwin Pond Parker.
Will you dine with me Wednesday afternoon at 4.30 to meet his Excellency Henry M. Stanley, Governor of the Congo Free State? [MTP]. Note: Wednesday, Dec. 8 evening, Stanley’s lecture.
Sam also wrote to Charles Webster suggesting a half or full-page ad in the Century over a quarter page. On Badeau’s book he opined,
I have read “Grant in Peace” up to the present time, & there hasn’t been a dull chapter thus far. It is mighty well written, too [MTLTP 209-10].
He added that he would “tackle” Henry M. Stanley about a book, and asked that a cloth LM be sent to Miss Mary E. Mathews, he thought of New Windsor, Maryland, who may have written him (not extant).
A notice ran in the New York Times, p 3 “BOOKS RECEIVED”:
MCCLELLAN’S OWN STORY, the War for the Union. By GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN, late Major-General Commanding. New-York: Charles L. Webster & Co. 1887.
Note: Interestingly, in this same list of books released, is Tennyson Calendar, 1887 by John Wanamaker; also, , 1886 by John Boyle O’Reilly, the author of Pope Leo XIII’s biography.
William Mackay Laffan wrote to Sam that he was “to see [Whitelaw] Reid tomorrow and may find out something. If you are right it is the most busted machine in existence.” This referred to the Mergenthaler Linotype machine on trial at the New York Tribune [MTNJ 3: 270].
John F. Lacy wrote from Oskaloosa, Iowa objecting to the “larceny committed by the blacksmith who perpetrated the engravings for ‘Roughing It’.” These were poor copies of J. Ross Browne’s, and “mutilated pictures.”
Look at Browne’s “Adventures in the Apache Country” published by the Harpers in 1869. Compare the “Saved Brother” on page 260 of “Roughing It” with the “Arizonian in sight of Home” in the Apache Country page 289. Compare also “The Man who had killed a dozen” in “Roughing It” p.340, with “The Candidate for Mayor”, page 500, in Browne’s Book [MTP]. Lacy thought killing this “artist” “would hardly be considered homicide.” Sam made no annotations on the envelope.