March 30 Friday – In Hartford Sam wrote to his nephew, Samuel Moffett in San Francisco. He had misread a letter from Moffett, thinking that Moffett was coming to find a job on a newspaper in New York. Sam thus wrote a paragraph and then crossed it out when he realized it was “McDowell” who was coming. Sam revealed his knowledge of several men who Moffett evidently had asked of:

I haven’t seen young Mr. Hearst yet, but I saw a good deal of his father & mother the other day, & if he is like them it would take gaudy wages to hire me to leave him & go to any editorial slave-owner I am acquainted with in New York. I knew McDowell’s father quite well, & shall be glad to know the son. And I shall be glad to welcome Mr. Reaser & his wife too [MTP].

Notes: Sam remembered Dr. John McDowell in his “Villagers of 1840-3”; in 1877 or 8 Sam wrote in his notebook: John McDowell: “Ich habe einander Niger gelickt!” (“I have licked another nigger!”), probably remembering some escapade of McDowell’s [MTNJ 2: 67n53]. Wecter writes of John and his father, Dr. E.D. McDowell, the eccentric who kept the cadaver of his fourteen-year-old daughter in a copper cylinder full of alcohol in Simm’s Cave, which then became McDowell’s Cave in Hannibal.

“Incidentally, Dr. McDowell, had a son, John, also a physician, whom his father treated so harshly as to drive him away from home. The young man took up with Mark’s uncle, Dr. James A.H. Lampton, who in 1849 had married a ‘loud and vulgar beauty’ named Ella Hunter, and soon opened a meager practice in St. Louis” [160-1]. Note: See 1890 entry for Wecter’s mistake re: Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell.. 

“Young Mr. Hearst” was William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), who became the publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, a paper his father, George Hearst (1820-1891), received as payment for a gambling debt. George married Phoebe Apperson in 1862, 22 years her senior. George Hearst hit the Washoe country early and invested in the Ophir mine, leaving with one of the first fortunes made there in 1860 [Mack 35]. George was also one of the passengers on the famous Hank Monk-Horace Greeley ride and benefactor of the gold watch given to Monk in honor of that wild ride. Of course, Sam used that story, and used that story! In prose and on the platform, although somewhat modified [Mack, 72]. Mr. and Mrs Reaser are not identified.

Caroline B. Le Row wrote to Sam with gratitude for his past help and to send the good news that she’d just finished an 800 page book MS with the title How To Shoot, which Cassell’s Co. expressed “their willingness to read.” Every chapter had specimens of “English as she is caught — or thought” [MTP].

Sam sent Charles Underhill a note (not extant) and a check to help with the publishing of the late David Gray’s poetry. Letter referred to in Underhill’s Apr. 2 [MTP]. Note: Underhill was a longtime salesman for J. Langdon & Co.

Sam also wrote to his other nephew, William L. Webster, son of Charles and Annie Moffett Webster, now a nine-year-old philatelist.

I’ll keep a sharp lookout, & whenever a stamp comes along that promises to be of any value to you, I’ll send it, & if it shouldn’t be worth anything, you can throw it away or put it in the missionary box, for the heathen.

Sam was reminded of “a squaw who liked bright colors” at a time when the first revenue stamps arrived at a post office and grocery store. Before the post office knew it, the female,

…pasted eight hundred dollars’ worth of them onto her naked body…If you could but add her to your collection! [MTP].