August 3 Wednesday – By this date Sam had returned to Elmira, where he wrote Charles Webster, concluding “our outlook is disturbing,” with the combined income from the Pope’s book and McClellan’s book only paying expenses. They had lost the Grant letters book, and Beecher had died, changing his book from an autobiography to a biography by the family, even if they could come to terms.

Therefore I beg you to put the Library of Humor in the works without waiting for pictures, & push it through, publishing the 15th of December. If somebody’s book must be turned over to the spring, let it be a stranger’s. If the canvassing book can with CERTAINTY be gotten ready & distributed by the 12th or the 15th of September, let me know, for I want relief of mind; the fun, which was abounding in the Yankee at Arthur’s Court up to three days ago, has slumped into funeral seriousness, & this will not do — it will not answer at all. The very title of the book requires fun, & it must be finished. But it can’t be done, I see, while this cloud hangs over the workshop.

I work seven hours a day, & am in such a taut-strung & excitable condition that everything that can worry me, does it; & I get up & spend from 1 o’clock till 3 a.m. pretty regularly every night, thinking — not pleasantly [MTLTP 221-2].