May 16 Wednesday – John Habberton (1842-1921), for 20 years the literary and dramatic critic for the N.Y. Herald, and author of the Sam-detested Helen’s Babies (1876), wrote to Sam offering a 100,000 word war book, “with scarcely a sign of a battle in it, but full of life and incidents over which the old boys of both armies chat most” [MTNJ 3: 390n308]. Sam, no doubt prejudiced by Habberton’s earlier work, declined. Habberton was well known under the pseudonym, “Smelfungus,” one that Sam may have agreed with. (See Gribben 283-4 for a summary of Sam’s statements about Habberton’s works.)